The Tiger

It may surprise people to know that one of the world's great white hunters turned tiger conservation specialist, Jim Corbett, after which a tiger reserve has been named, said that, "Tigers, except when wounded or when man-eaters, are on the whole very good-tempered. Occasionally a tiger will object to too close an approach to its cubs or to a kill that it is guarding. The objection invariably takes the form of growling, and if this does not prove effective it is followed by short rushes accompanied by terrifying roars. If these warnings are disregarded, the blame for any injury inflicted rests with the intruder." Image in the public domain. The healthy tiger is a reluctant attacker of people. It wants to avoid people. They have the ability to kill people quite easily but the surprise to many is that they rarely do so. Radio collared tigers had been found about 10 m from a trail were hundreds of people walk. They have been seen next to a river in which tourist boats pass w...

The answer is yes , when possible. I have two sources for that. The first one is probably the best. It comes from my book Wild Cats of the World by Mel and Fiona Sunquist, perhaps the best book on wild cat species you can buy. In their section on "conflict with humans" they state that: "The most significant reduction in human deaths followed the 1987 introduction of inexpensive rubberised masks, which are worn on the back of the head. The authorities reasoned that as tigers normally attack prey from behind, rather than face to face, a mask worn on the back of the head should be a deterrent". Human wearing a face mask on the back of the head for protection against a tiger attack. The photo is by Raghu Rai of Magnum . They conducted an experiment to prove that this was correct. About 2,500 masks were issued to approximately 8,000 workers entering a tiger reserve. The authorities said that "The results were dramatic". In 1987 nobody wearing the masks were ki...

This is a classic and very instructive video from India showing how roads and traffic carve up a tiger's home range fragmenting it and killing tigers both through traffic accidents and creating small, unviable sub-populations where genetic diversity is problematic leading to inbreeding and health issues plus sterility. The following quote comes from the IUCN Red List. The people who run the database are the experts on species becoming extinct. The text in brackets is the source of the information. These are scientific studies. "Habitat fragmentation driven by linear infrastructure development, land-use change, and urbanization can drive the extinction of tiger subpopulations (e.g., Mondal and Nagendra 2011, Joshi et al. 2016). Tigers can become locally or functionally extinct in areas where habitat connectivity is severed or severely compromised (Gopal et al. 2010; Harihar et al. 2018b, 2020)." They talk of habitat connectivity being compromised. This means that areas of ...

NEWS AND COMMENT-Sathyamangalam, Tamil Naidu, India: Sathyamangalam is a town and municipality in Erode district in the Indian state of Tamil Naidu. It is near the Western Ghats. There are rolling landscapes covered with dense forests. They have some beautiful tiger reserves. The Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve is located there with 80 tigers. The reserve is contiguous with other reserves. Clearly, tiger conservation is important in the area and a major part of the lives of the citizens. Tamil Naidu has five tiger reserves and 15 wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve. Picture in public domain. However, the Communist Party of India (CPI) spokesperson in a meeting to discuss measures to protect the livelihood of tribal people and other forest dwellers stated that tiger conservation should not undermine the livelihoods of the hill people. This was a reference to an order passed by the Madras High Court that banned vehicle movement during night hours on Dhimbam...

It is reported that Bengal tigers killed more than 100 people in India in three years. In fact, 108 died between 2019 and last year according to junior environment minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey in Parliament. The human conflict with the Bengal tiger is an ongoing problem. It is brought about because of a lack of space. India is a highly populated country. Tigers require very large amounts of territory in order to behave naturally. The tiger reserves in India are arguably too small. At least some of them are. And you will get settlements on the outskirts of tiger reserves and you will even see people living inside the reserves. To an outsider that seems strange. A tiger walks past a vehicle carrying tourists at Ranthambore National Park, India. Photo in public domain. You will get farmers being attacked by tigers. In the Sundarbans which straddle the border with Bangladesh, there appears to be more human-tiger conflict than in other tiger reserves. This is probably because there are mo...

My understanding of the attempts at Bengal tiger conservation, in at least parts of India, is that the local government pays compensation to the relatives or next of kin of a person who has been killed by a tiger. I will speculate that the purpose is to prevent retaliation attacks by the local people on the tiger. It appears that in some districts the local villagers have become tired of conservation efforts and want rid of the tigers.  Tiger attack at Chinese zoo. This is unconnected with the stories and the picture is here to solely illustrate the page. Tiger attacks in the wild are rarely if ever photographed. There are more tiger-human conflicts as the years go by because there are more people squeezing the amount of territory available for tiger reserves or they occupy land bordering tiger reserves or actually inside the reserves. All of which provokes confrontation. Example 1 A tiger mauled to death a 15 year old girl, Shivpyari Vishwakarma, who was collecting flowers in t...

In 1996 Dr Desmond Morris's book Cat World was published. Okay, that is 16 years ago and the stresses on tiger conservation since then have mounted because the four reasons for the fall in tiger populations listed below are still present and getting worse. Bengal tiger cooling off in water. Photo: Pixabay. Tigers are great swimmers. In 1996 the human population of Asia had more than doubled since 1950 to 3,000 million. It will be double that in another 30 years. The 'living space for the tigers is vanishing year by year'. Yes, it is a simple matter of space. Tigers need lots of it: hundreds of square miles (male: up to 300 square kilometres). Secondly he writes that sport hunting still exists. I disagree with this because nowadays when tigers are shot they are not shot for the entertainment factor, they are shot dead for their body parts which are very valuable in Chinese medicine. Yes, there is still some illegal trophy hunting of the tiger but sport hunting is scarce ...

On the whole, tigers are well tempered creatures disinterested in attacking people. They prefer to avoid humans and normally give them a wide berth. Even if they are provoked they will growl back and if provoked further they may rush at the person combined with a loud roar but they will not attack. Their intention is to avoid attack and to see the person off. Occasionally a tiger may object to a person approaching too closely to her cubs or to their kill that they are guarding. But one of the great so-called big-game hunters of that era, Jim Corbett, said that if a person is attacked by a tiger the blame rests with the intruder. Champawat tiger. Image in public domain due to lapse of time. It is said that if tigers and lions which attack people in an unprovoked manner it is possibly or probably due to the fact that the tiger is injured and unable to successfully bring down a typical prey animal. They therefore have to resort to much easier prey i.e. the human. This topic is relevant...

I can answer this question without referring to books or doing internet research because it is fairly obvious. Firstly, humans are not on the list of prey items of the tiger. The tiger does not prey on the human. It is common sense, I guess, because the human is the top predator and beats the tiger. The human is the only animal that beats the tiger routinely. If a tiger attacks humans there has to be some good reasons and there are. The tiger is desperate. Man-eating big cats including the tiger are often infirm, old, injured and/or forced to come into contact with the human because they can't find a home range. They are beaten by other tigers in finding a place to live. If a tiger is hungry and unable to find its usual prey because it has been killed by people and if the tiger has been injured by people or old then if the tiger comes into contact with people because, due to a lack of space they are forced together, the tiger may attack the human for food. When thi...

Here's a table showing world tiger populations at the date of this post: Please note that counting the number of wildcats, whatever the species or subspecies, has in the past been notoriously unrealiable. The process is better managed now, probably because of the increased use of camera traps (cameras that fire off on movement in front of the camera). But there is still political interference I would argue. However, these figures, as you can see go back to 2004 at best. That is 7 years ago and quite a lot can happen in 7 years in respect of tiger populations particularly in relation to the tigers in south Asia where habitat (forest) is being consistently eroded for commercial reasons. Human population size and growth is still high in India and Bangladesh. The Siberian tiger population is stable but fertility is poor amongst the tigers resulting in an effective population in the far east of Russia, in terms of reproduction, of 14 individuals .

I have said that the South China tiger subspecies ( Panthera tigris amoyensis ) is totally extinct - captive or wild . That may be a rash statement but it is based on sensible thought and real information. As at 2002, on the publication of the Sunquist's renown Wild Cats Of The World , of the five-remaining subspecies of the tiger (I say it's four now) the South China tiger was the most endangered. Tiger farm - Photo by International Tiger Coalition The decline in population was rapid at the end. In 1949 it was thought that there were 4,000 individuals. However, this fantastic animal was "declared a pest" and mercilessly persecuted. I can understand one aspect of this. The tiger is hard to live with because it is a very large and a potentially dangerous animal. Humankind has great difficulty sharing the planet with it. But the main reason for its decline is Chinese medicine. Please note that I am not being judgemental. I am simply describing what has gone o...

What caused the extinction of the Javan tiger? It is really a story about the usual culprit - humans. In the 1800s tigers were widespread in Java. The forests of Java were the tiger's habitat. The forests were "converted to teak" (1). So the tiger's habitat was despoiled by people. The lost of tiger habitat forced the Javan tiger to find sanctuary in inaccessible places on the island. By the 1970 the tiger lived on the southeast coast of Java on the Meru-Betiri Reserve. The reserve was not good tiger habitat. Deer, the prey of tigers, was hunted. Hunting of deer in combination with rapid human population growth lead to a rapidly declining deer population. By the 1950s deer could only be found outside reserves or sanctuaries. And these places were few in number. Another prime tiger prey, the wild boar was slaughtered under government directive by poisoning.  The only abundant prey for the tiger was primates with very low boar numbers. Javan tigers at this tim...

Why did the Caspian tiger become extinct? Uhmm, we really only have to look at what is going on today. But how, specifically, did we lose the Caspian tiger? The Caspian tiger did not populate the area densely but in and around water courses and where there was water. The range of the Caspian tiger was approximately that of its prime prey the cervids, examples of which are red and roe deer and the wild boar. Caspian tiger. Photo: Wikipedia. He looks overweight due to his captivity. He looks very heavy. The DNA of the Caspian tiger is very close to that of the Siberian tiger apparently. The beginning of the end for this tiger was the occupation of the region by Russians. The Russians cultivated the reedbeds to agricultural land (growing cotton), thereby despoiling the tiger's habitat and hunted the tiger and its prey, the wild boar, that helped to support the tiger. Colonisation of the area was facilitated by the river systems. The tiger was then made vulnerable to the activities o...

The tiger has extraordinary athleticism and courage. Here is a verbatim account from a tiger hunt that took place in and around the 1850s. In those days shooting at tigers was commonplace. It makes me admire the tiger hugely but detest the human in equal measure. "Lieutenant Rice relates an anecdote of an extraordinary leap made by a tigress. He happened to be near the city Bhampoora, and was preparing to examine a large ravine in the vicinity, when word was brought back that a tigress had been seen creeping out of a thick patch of cover that had already been beaten. The beast had cunningly remained hidden in spite of the noise made by the men; and, thinking the danger was over, was attempting to sneak off unobserved to some distant jungle, when she was espied by a man who had been stationed near the spot as a look-out. Lieutenant Rice and his companion took up their position on the slope of a hill, and sent the sent the beaters round the opposite side for the purpose of driving...

Tiger conflict with humans is really about man-eating tigers in the old fashioned sense. Or at least that is probably what people are interested in hearing about. The truth, though, is far more mundane. Tigers are not really interested in us. They want to be left alone and to leave us alone. Although tigers have plenty of opportunities to kill us and clearly have the ability to do so, they do not. Using radiotelemetry (tigers wearing radio transmitters) we can tell that even when tigers are close to footpaths used by people they ignore the people. By close I mean a few meters (ten feet). Corbett was a tiger hunter turned conservationists. A tiger reserve in the north of India is named after him. He knew tigers and he sums it up very nicely. Tigers he says are "very good tempered", except when wounded or man-eaters. Tigers object to people getting too close to its cubs or perhaps prey it has killed and is guarding. However, the tiger does not just attack to defend, it...