Research overview: the Champawat tiger and the history of man-eating in the Himalayan foothills

This overview revisits the historical record of man-eating tigers in the Himalayan foothills, centred on the Champawat tigress reputed to have killed hundreds before being shot by Jim Corbett in the early twentieth century. It synthesises Corbett's own observations and later analyses arguing that injury, often from gunshot wounds or porcupine quills that impaired natural hunting, drove individual tigers and leopards to target people. The literature treats these accounts as early case studies linking physical impairment, prey scarcity, and human encroachment to man-eating. The survey uses the Champawat narrative to illustrate enduring questions about how individual circumstance produces conflict-prone predators.