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not just animals, trees have holes and stuff slowly damaging them (parasites gets in), they resist until they can't

Humans too, for the most part, until very recently.

It's all situational- any predator will eat another one when it has the advantage.

No animal comes close to equaling humans as predators at the top of our game as hunters- e.g. young healthy adults working together as a team with well made weapons, a coordinated strategy, local knowledge, and hard won experience. But as this article shows, there are plenty of situations where these advantages don't apply.

For the most part, predators generally dislike trying to eat each other unless all other options are exhausted, as it is much safer and easier to go after things that have less of a chance of turning the tables on you. I am a freediver that dives mostly in a place with a lot of white sharks, and contrary to popular stereotypes, they're actually quite afraid of, and keep their distance from humans. Rare attacks seem to occur when there is some situation that visually confuses them, and they mistake us for one of their common prey animals.

"Food chain" is an unreasonable simplification destined to teach some concepts, and not something that exists and can be reasoned about.

(In fact, it's mostly not even used to teach anymore, because it wasn't helpful even for that.)

It's not a linear thing. It's a network, probably not even acyclic.

Seems like HN's title rewrite did a bad job in this case, it should be "These 19th century lions ..." or "Two 19th century lions ..."

Knowing this is limited to two specific lion carcasses from 1898.

Fortunately, for most carnivores it is difficult to assess whether they are capable of attacking a human or not, so they typically are even more afraid of humans than humans are afraid of them.

Therefore a very small fraction of the carnivores that are capable of attacking a human will actually do it, even when hungry.

In general, all animals in the regions where humans existed had an exaggerate fear of humans in comparison with their fear of any other animals. Only in the regions not yet reached by humans, like various islands, the animals did not fear humans at their first arrival, so both easy hunting for humans and attacks from carnivores were more likely.

Nowadays, when most humans are no longer hunters, this has changed and there are many regions where the animals have become accustomed with human presence, which may also increase the likelihood of a carnivore attempting an attack when there is no other food.

My cats understand I can (somehow) control their automatic feeder from my phone and when hungry pester me until I pull out my phone and run over as soon as they see the reflection of the splash screen from the feeder app on my face.

They physically defeated the previous few feeders. Unable to do so with this one, they've doubled down on social engineering.

Nature, uh, finds a way.

Giraffes are a difficult prey, so not many lions attempt to hunt them.

For those who do this, it is a team action. Many lionesses are necessary to tire the giraffe and reduce its possibilities of movement. After the lionesses have tired the giraffe, a big male lion is required to kill it, by jumping on giraffe's back, then biting and holding its throat, to suffocate it.

Lions use the same method for all big and dangerous prey.

Smaller prey is hunted only by the lionesses, but big prey like buffaloes, giraffes or baby elephants is first harassed by the lionesses and later, when tired enough, it is killed by the male through suffocation.

I can't help but think that all they need to do is trip them up, that's a long way to fall.

Here’s a story of a woman who rang her mom while being eaten by a bear.

https://www.news.com.au/world/help-mum-the-bear-is-eating-me...

If that’s disturbing, see African wild dogs and hyenas.

That said, I think the majority of prey is killed before consumed (say >65%). Big cats are used to suffocating or biting necks. It’s rather clean, compared to other animals even bears. There is an unlucky percentage, but the general rule is probably killing the prey first. The examples that I mentioned is because dogs and hyenas aren’t powerful enough to kill big prey like big cats. The hunt seems very brutal, but the duration of suffering might be limited: the whole prey is fully consumed within minutes. The prey is exhausted initially, hyenas then tear it apart from areas around intestine or below that. Massive shock and bleeding.

A lot of predators will do this because they want to get those calories in their bellies fast, before some other creatures come and chase them off. They'll often eat certain organs first because of their high nutrient content. If the prey is dead or alive doesn't matter so long as it can't injure them or run off.

That is true of many if not most predators.

> So, after DNA analysis, scientists discover than man-eating lions were eating humans! Who'd have guessed!

The point seems to be developing novel analysis, not so much interest in what these particular lions ate, which was documented anyway. I wrote a bit longer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41850781

It's so cool to see humans be hunted. Fear of the monster outside, makes humans care for each other more. Now everything is safer, and we fight between ourselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemba_people

Given the close contacts over millennia, i would be more surprised if there were not any DNA links.