How Much Do Tigers Eat?
An adult tiger eats from 18 to 27 kilograms of food a night (40 - 60 pounds). Other examples of how much tigers eat at one sitting or during one day are as follows:
- A male tiger ate 35 kilograms of flesh in one night (77 lbs).
- A tigress consumed 30 kilograms of flesh at one sitting (an adult chital). It took her from mid-morning on one day to the morning of the next day to do it.
- A tigress and and two young ate 102 kilograms (225 pounds) of flesh in two days (17 kgs per animal per day)
- One large buffalo plus an adult cow were eaten in six days by four tigers.
- The maximum a tiger can eat over 24 hours is a fifth of its body weight which for a large male equals 45 kgs. At the end of eating the carcass of the prey, it will be decomposing.
- The flesh of a carcass decomposes in two days in hot weather. Tigers will eat putrified flesh covered in maggots and when finishing a large carcass tigers may spend more than half their time eating decomposing flesh. Meat putrefies in a couple of days in hot weather. They continue to eat a large carcass for four or five days.
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