[Bruno]

I think I've been grossly misunderstood. I didn't say that man-eating animals are a plague upon our landscape, any more than I said there's a serial killer hiding under every bush.

It's just that it's one thing for people to be in a mad panic over something that isn't there, and another thing for people to be in a mad panic over something they are actually having a problem with - as in actual man-eating animals that are actually eating people. As is the case with those man-eating lions in east Africa, who are actually killing women and children, because lions are plenty smart enough to recognize the difference between a man with a gun, an unarmed woman burdened with water, and children, and pick the soft targets.

An animal that isn't actually eating people is not a thing that's actually there - it's just as vaporous as Spring Heeled Jack and the Monkey Man, and just as much a product of mass hysteria.

It's not like all the lions in east Africa are man eaters, and for the most part the locals aren't under the impression they are - they've lived with lions for a long time and they know that it's very abnormal behavior (thus the somewhat pervasive belief that the lions are ghosts and have been sent by an angry sorcerer). However where there is one group of man-eating lions, every large land-dwelling carnivore gets shot until the man-eaters are killed. Even though everyone knows it's lions.