The Tiger

They suffocate them after knocking them to the ground with their considerable bulk and the strength in their forelegs. They grab the animal with both their massive front paws. The claws sink into the animal's flesh. They are gripped tightly. The tiger then clamps his/her jaws around the prey's windpipe. The tiger then squeezes the victim's throat and holds on until it is suffocated. Unable to breathe in the vice-like grip they animal passes away quietly and quickly. The tiger will often keep its jaws around the neck for several minutes to make sure it is dead. They've experienced prey surviving and racing off in the past. The tiger pulls its prey into bushes. Tigers have enormous strength and can pull huge prey animals considerable distances over rough terrain. Tigers sometimes kill fellow big felines such as the leopard. The latter avoids the tiger! Legendary tiger strength on show as tiger pulls SUV backwards with its teeth clamped on bumper . Image: in public domain....

The way of life of the tiger is built around hunting. And each tiger lives alone and they hunt alone. In the forests of Asia where nearly all tigers live (except the Siberian tiger in the Far East of Russia) the world's biggest and greatest hunter has no choice but to hunt alone because of the dense vegetation which is their habitat.  Tiger kills a deer. They hunt alone. Image in the public domain. Hunting in a group would not be successful. Apparently, very rarely, they might hunt in a group under certain favourable circumstances but this is essentially a solitary hunter. Their method of killing is to get near as possible to the prey animal using cover from their habitat and their camouflaged coat. They approach prey downwind from the prey animal. This means that their body odour is not carried towards the prey animal which might alert them. The tiger has to get as close as possible to the targeted prey animal because they cannot sprint for great distances. They have to approach t...

There would appear to be two factors which influence when tigers living in the wild are most active: Human activity Prey activity Human activity In a way this behaviour is reminiscent of the leopard. The tiger, in many parts of their range, have become totally nocturnal as a response to human activities. In other words, in areas where the human is active during the daytime, this has put off tigers being active themselves during the daytime and in order to avoid humans they have become nocturnal. It shows that tigers can be both nocturnal and daytime hunters. It also shows us that tigers are wary of people and don't really want to get involved with them. This might surprise some people who think that tigers prey on humans. They don't. The human is not a prey animal for the tiger. Tigers have quite nice dispositions (character). You will find that where tigers attack people it is often because they can no longer attack large prey animals (which they need to attack to survive) bec...

Yes, the tiger is the largest hunter of any kind to stalk the earth today . And of all the tiger species, the largest is the Siberian because they have evolved in the cold Far East of Russia where size matters in order to maintain body temperature. The tiger is the largest member of the cat family, and its immense power enables it to kill almost any kind of hooved animal up to large wild cattle. The difference in size between the tiger and the leopard and the subservience of the leopard to the tiger is dramatically shown in this excellent photograph. And note that the tiger regards the common leopard as a prey animal. There is no 'cat agreement' to leave each alone. When hunting the final dash has to be relatively short because of the tiger's immense weight. The tiger can maintain top speed for around 30 metres.  It delivers a massive blow with its front paw to knock the animal down except for the very large prey animals. Once down the tiger grabs the animal in its front cl...

In Chitwan National Park, in the far north of India, almost on the foothills of the Himalayas, radio tracking of the Bengal tiger showed that tigers often hunt while moving slowly along roads and trails. They do this because it allows them to move quietly and they don't have the added burden of having to push through dense grass and brush (as reported by Mel and Fiona Sunquist in their book Wild Cats of the World ).  Tiger on a trail in a tiger reserve in India. Image: Pixabay. Tigers have been observed to hunt like this by many naturalists including Dunbar Brander, who recorded his observations in Wild animals in central India published in 1931. His description in his book is particularly apt according to Mel and Fiona Sunquist: "The usual daily round of a tiger is to commence questing for food shortly before sunset and to continue doing so all night. In this questing, they go at a slow walk often following the beds of nalas and jungle roads, especially so in the cold weathe...

Night-time radio-tracking in India's tiger reserves indicates that tigers often hunt at night while moving slowly along roads and trails. They do this because it is quiet and they don't disturb prey animals. It means they don't have to brush through dense grass which creates noise. It is also more comfortable not to have to push through dense vegetation which might be wet and cold. Tigers mainly hunt at night all night. Photo: Pixabay (modified). The usual routine for a tiger is to start looking for food shortly before sunset and to continue all night long. Siberian tigers live in very cold and snowy conditions and they can sometimes starve to death if the snow is unusually heavy. They avoid hunting in areas with deep snow cover because their prey won't be there. And also because it is difficult to walk through an unstable snow crust. If the snow is deep they might take advantage of a frozen river bed or paths made by the animals that they are preying upon i.e. large...

There was a time when tigers were considered pests. The time was towards the middle of the eighteenth century. That's the middle of the 1700s for the sake of clarity. The fact of the matter is that many people today still consider the tiger to be a pest.  Tigers can still get in the way of day-to-day human life (the conflict in the Sundarbans region in Bangladesh being an example). Perhaps this is one reason why, despite an apparent concerted effort to protect the tiger, their numbers are still slowly declining and are precariously low (around 3.5k worldwide in the wild). Tiger hunting during the British Raj in India. Photo in the publis domain. A man called J. Forsyth wrote about the 'obstacle presented by the number of these animals [he was referring to tigers] to the advance of population and tillage'. It is old fashioned language meaning that tigers stopped the human population growing and stopped people working. His words were published in 1872 in his work The Highl...

Even today in Asia tiger body parts are still extensively used by people to improve their well-being or status, or so they believe. The Chinese are particularly involved with this. The body parts are also often used in Chinese traditional medicine. However, you can go back a very long way indeed throughout history to see how humankind's reverence and admiration of the tiger has often been its demise. It is very odd that animals that people admire end up being killed by people because humankind likes to possess or eat a piece of that animal thinking that it benefits them. Tiger clavicle bone as a brooch. Photo: Tennants Auctioneers. For example, the tiger clavicle bone was often turned into a brooch. You can see one in the photograph above. This particular brooch is mounted in gold metal with a pin fastener. It is 7.5 cm long. A very small bone for such a very large predatory animal. This is because its reduced size allows the tiger to stride longer and therefore move faster....

Dr Desmond Morris, in his book Cat World tells us that the hunting success rate of tigers is about 1 in 20 or 5%. Clearly a poor success rate. He also tells us that a female with cubs has a better success rate because of the urgency to feed her cubs. He puts it at a 1 in 5 chance or 20%. Tiger eating. Photo on Flickr and by Tambako The Jaguar The internet tells me that the success rate is 10% or between 5% and 10% depending on the source. However way you cut it, the success rate is low. This accounts for why tigers are careful eaters leaving little of its prey for scavengers. And they gulp down as much as 30 kg or 66 pounds of meat at a single sitting. When it has finished it may stay with the partly eaten body of its prey until it becomes hungry again and then continue. Alternatively a tiger may cover the carcass with leaves and branches hiding it from predators and scavengers. It can then return for a second meal. The tiger also has to travel long distances to find and kill prey ...