Over the course of the production, which lasted roughly five years of actual filming spread across eleven years of total production time, more than seventy people were injured. Some accounts place the number higher; John Marshall, one of the sons who appeared in the film, has estimated that over one hundred people were injured. The exact count is not documented in a single authoritative record, because not every injury was reported to an official body, and because the production appears to have proceeded without the standard safety oversight that would have applied to a conventional Hollywood shoot.
Among the specific injuries documented in the available record:
Jan de Bont, the cinematographer who would later direct Speed (1994) and Twister (1996), was scalped by a lion during production. The attack required two hundred and twenty sutures. He returned to work on the film after treatment.
Noel Marshall was bitten repeatedly across the production. He received eight puncture wounds on his leg during a fight scene with one of the big cats. He was bitten eleven times in total, by various accounts. Eventually his injuries led to blood poisoning and gangrene — infections that were severe enough that he required hospitalization and years of recovery. A lion bite that becomes infected in sufficient ways to produce gangrene is a serious medical situation.
Tippi Hedren sustained multiple injuries. A lion named Cherries bit her during a promotional reel shoot and drew blood from her head. An elephant named Timbo — one of the largest animals on the set — fractured her ankle and injured her hand. She was scratched by leopards and bitten by a cougar on separate occasions.