If two tigers meet in the wild, will they fight?
If two tigers meet in the wild, will they fight? Well, the first point to make is that in the wild, each tiger has a territory about as big as a modern city. Male ranges are a lot bigger than females' and male ranges include female ranges . Territorial ownership is marked out by spraying scented urine against trees and scratching the bark with sharp claws. This is a way of tigers preventing meeting up. It's a way of keeping them apart because they realise that fights between rivals can be so damaging even to the winner that it may impair their survival. So male tigers avoid other male tigers and female tigers avoid other female tigers. When a male tiger meets a female even outside the breeding season there is a small friendly greeting using a close call sounding like: fuf-fuf-fuf . But there are two instances under which tigers might fight: times of flux and tension over resources and territory. The most sought-after resources for a male tiger in the wild are female tigers and...