Visit a natural history museum in a capital city in Europe or North America and you’ll find a display of African animals front and center. Why is African fauna so highly prized? How did it earn pride of place in the natural science of the developed world while African people and their contributions to global knowledge are routinely overlooked? This presentation explores the intertwined histories of hunting, science and ecology in Africa from the eighteenth century through the present, including consideration of Cecil, a lion killed by an American hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015.