But insurrection is not the only consideration these days for those planning eco-visits to Africa’s spectacular wildlife parks and preserves. Tourist camps in the heart of Wild Kingdom are increasingly viewed as fast food outlets by wild carnivores.

"There have been a fair number of lion attacks on humans in the last couple of years," Craig Packer, director of the University of Minnesota’s Lion Research Center in St. Paul, told New Scientist. "The problem is, there are a growing number of eco-tourist camps that are putting people in the bush."

What were once ambushes from infirm lions giving in to desperation are now attacks by roaming, displaced young males unable to pass up a tasty human. "It may be all too much for a young lion to resist," added Packer.

And it’s not just lions feasting on tasty Western tourists in Kenya. In Botswana, hyenas are discovering the dining convenience of eco-tourist bush camps. An 11-year old American boy was killed and eaten by hyenas after he was pulled from his tent in the Xakasa Safari Camp in the Moremi Game Reserve. A few weeks before, lions had killed and eaten a 20-year old man.

Shortly after a fatal lion mauling of one of its rangers, the manager of Okapuka Ranch in Namibia, Frank Schaffer, observed that lions don’t differentiate between an antelope, cattle or human.

"To them, meat is meat and nothing else," Schaffer explained to The Namibian in Windhoek. "A lion is a wild animal and it doesn’t kill for fun, it kills to eat."