Rescued tiger released into the Bay of Bengal with a gigantic leap

This is a cool video of a Bengal tiger leaping off a boat in the world's largest mangrove swamp called the Sundarbans. It is a delta which is on the boundary between Bangladesh and north-east India. And the Sundarbans are a very important reserve and park for the Bengal tiger. There are hundreds of them there although farmers work within this mangrove forest which is why there is human-tiger conflict. This undermines the conservation of the Tiger and of course it causes loss of life. In that regard it is a failure.

Please click on the link to see the video on Twitter as it does not work here 😎. pic.twitter.com/u6ls2NW7H3

However, in this instance clearly this tiger was rescued and they decided to release the tiger from quite a long way offshore which surprises me somewhat although the Bengal tiger is a fantastic swimmer. They can swim for miles if needs be. I just think that it would have been better if they had released the tiger nearer the shore. My gut feeling is that they wanted to make an interesting video and it is interesting.

We are told that it was made some time ago so this is not hot off the press news. What is nice about it is the fact that we see the tiger swimming and leaping. Tigers like water. They like it because it keeps them cool in very hot ambient temperatures. 

Tiger leaps from boat into the Sundarbans Sea and to the wild after being rescued. Screenshot.

Right now, India is going through a massive heatwave with temperatures rising to someone near 50°C in some areas. They've put this down to global warming. The tiger will retreat to the water where they will no doubt stay during the heat of the day. And there are prey animals near water so they can do some hunting at the same time.

The Bengal tiger has adapted itself to living in a seawater mangrove swamp. They had to because there's nowhere else for them to live. This is their home; it is a home given to them by humans. It is a national park as mentioned but I would suggest that it is far from ideal mainly because of human-tiger conflict.

Mask which protects from tiger attack. Photo: Raghu Rai.

They have devised some quite fancy methods to protect themselves from tiger attacks. One such method is to wear a mask on the back of their heads. So, on the back of the heads of farmers in the Sundarbans is a human face. When a tiger sees it, it puts them off attacking. It's been quite successful. It seems that tigers prefer to attack from behind and when they are not being looked at which is sensible.