Tigress carries a fawn in her mouth as if she is carrying her own cub

This is one of those extraordinary pictures of a huge predator, a tigress, not killing and eating a prey animal that is right next to her. But rather than kill and eat this fawn the tigress appears to be relating to the young animal as one of her offspring. 

Tigress carries a fawn in her mouth as if she is carrying her own cub. Photo: Instagram.

Perhaps she is pregnant (see looks it) and those mothering emotions are coming out and dominating the emotion to attack, kill and eat. And sometimes tigers are curious so they don't always (albeit very rarely) kill and eat prey animals. 

We have seen it before in fact with large predators, particularly big cats. I've seen a leopard playing with a young antelope, for example. 

I guess sometimes these encounters start like this but lead to the death of the prey animal because the instincts of the tiger are somewhat jumbled up and at the end of the day the dominant instinct is to kill. 

Notwithstanding that I am reassured that in this particular instance no killing took place. You can see the tigress just about to pick up the fawn in her mouth to carry the animal.