The misogynistic world of tiger property rights!

This is a cross-post. The world of tigers is misogynistic by human standards by which I mean it is the male dominating and demanding easy access to females to procreate. And one way they achieve this is by having a home range which is much bigger than that of females and which encompasses the home ranges of several females. This allows them easy access for procreation. 

It is a symbol, as I see it, of male domination, a bit like a harem in human society. It is a bit surprising to me that harems still exist in the world in the 21st century in third-world countries or perhaps illegally where they are accepted. 

In ancient times kings and potentates in Asia tended to have multiple wives simultaneously. Wikipedia tells us that a harem may house a man's wife or wives and other unmarried female relatives and unmarried female daughters. Within a home the women live in a separate area and the male owns the home. It looks very similar to tiger social organisation.

The seclusion of women is still practised in some parts of the world such as rural Afghanistan and in conservative states of the Persian Gulf.

Anyway, I digress, this is about the tiger land tenure system. The infographic above provides you with a representational viewpoint about how it works.

It is very variable and flexible because it depends upon the environmental circumstances.

Female tigers establish and maintain small exclusive ranges compared to males. They are loyal to this range and they remain there throughout their reproductive lives.

The size of the home range depends upon prey density. In other words, is there enough prey for a tiger to live on in the area of their choosing? And that depends as you would expect on the area.

In Nepal, the Chitwan National Park is a place where there has been quite a lot of studies of tigers, the average female tiger home range might be between 10 km² up to about 50 km². The male home range will be between 2-15 times larger and encompasses, as mentioned, the home ranges of the females. There might be up to around seven female home ranges within one male territory.

The infographic shows three female home ranges but as I said this is representational.

In Russia the male tiger home range might be up to 1000 km² whereas the female's might be up to about 400 km².

Once again, the basic model, and we see this another wildcat species, is that the much larger male home range encompasses those of females. Although this is not always the case and there is a lot of variability depending upon circumstances.

Sometimes, such as for the bobcat, the male home ranges overlap. Indeed, for the Siberian Tiger the male home ranges also overlap and under the circumstances they use scent marking and scraping to employ, as I see it, a form of timeshare so that they do not bump into each other.

In Russia, the home ranges are so large in any event that this potential is minimised. And the males scent mark (feline 'calling cards') a lot more than females. In one study in India, they observed a male tiger establishing his territory by scent marking 49 trees per month whereas a long-term resident female in an adjoining range marked a similar area about half that time.

Clearly, in the world of tigers the males do things twice as big and twice as numerous as females! Like I said by human standards it looks misogynistic.