The Tiger

There are records of males killing cubs, and some of these instances of infanticide occurred at kills. So for young cubs, the vicinity of a kill can be a dangerous place because of the likelihood of encountering other tigers there.  Tiger cubs are vulnerable to being killed at kill sites by adult male tigers. Photo: Pixabay. The words are quoted verbatim from the book Wild Cats of the World . I take the words to mean that at a kill site where there is competition to eat the carcass of an animal, male tigers will kill a much smaller tiger i.e. a cub, to ensure access to the food.  To the best of my knowledge, tigers do not kill cubs in order to bring the mother into heat so that they can procreate and generate their own offspring. Tigers don't do this or at least my research indicates this. But lions do. My research also indicates that sometimes in India's tiger reserves they use a buffalo, a live buffalo actually, as bait to draw tigers into an area so that tourists can wat...

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...

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...

Tigers want and need access to large terrestrial animals as prey. Therefore what is good for these prey animals is good for the tiger. You'll find the highest density of tigers and the largest home range size where there is an abundance of large terrestrial prey.   What is the natural or ideal habitat of the tiger? A habitat that supports its ideal prey animal: large ungulates. This is related to habitat diversity and primary productivity. 'Primary productivity' refers to the rate at which energy from sunlight is converted to organic substances by photosynthesis.  This is a reference to the tiger food chain. Where the habitat is able to convert sunlight into an abundance of plants which feeds the herbivore prey animals of the tiger there will be an ideal and natural habitat for the tiger. In practical terms this is where 'grassland and forest form a mosaic; a mix of vegetation types supports a rich ungulate community'. Ungulates are hoofed mammals. Note: tigers a...

NEWS AND COMMENT: Atkosia Tiger Reserve is located in the Angul district of Odisha, India covering an area of 988.30 km². A plan to repopulate the reserve with tigers has failed miserably with a catalogue of disasters. Sad failure in tiger conservation in India. Photo: The Hindu file photo. A tigress imported into the reserve (one of a pair) has been removed from the reserve to be returned to Madhya Pradesh. The tigress's name is Sundari. The tiger was kept in a special enclosure inside the Satkosia Forest before removal. A final act of failure. Before the return of Sundari it was claimed that the reserve had abundant prey and the management had asked for fresh tigers.  In the first year of the repopulation a tiger was gifted from Kanha and a tigress from the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve.  The tigress strayed into a human settlement surrounding the reserve and killed two people. And then, in Nov 2018, the first tiger was killed by poachers. Comment : poaching of Bengal tigers ...

Adult tiger at repose. Image: Pixabay. What was the tiger called in the life of Pi? Answer: Richard Parker who is a Bengal tiger that lived in a zoo owned by Pi's family. What was the Tiger King's name? Answer: this is a reference to Joe Exotic, real name Joseph Allen Schreibvogel, who featured in the recent Netflix docuseries about private zoos in America and the ostensible feud (not true) between Mr Exotic and Carole Baskin who founded, owns and managed Big Cat Rescue (BCR). What was the tiger's name in Aladdin? Answer: Rajah. What was the tiger's name in Jungle Book? Answer: Shere Khan (a Bengal tiger). What does 'Shere Khan' mean? According to The Kipling Society 'shere' means tiger and 'khan' is a title of distinction as he is the chief among tigers. Image by  No-longer-here  from  Pixabay  

A swath of officials in the Indian city of Raipur, Chhattisgarh have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in the illegal tiger trade and there appears to be evidence that villagers have been eating tiger body parts.  Bengal tiger for illustration purposes only. Photo in public domain. Eating tiger body parts almost exclusively occurs in the Far East of Asia e.g. in Vietnam, China and Laos. This is the first time to my knowledge that Indians in India have been involved in this conservation-busting practice. It must have happened before, however. Two assistant sub-inspectors of police, five constables, three health department officials and a school headmaster are among those arrested for being involved in the illegal trade of a tiger hide. They caught them through a decoy operation on March 12th. It is reported that two local residents have confessed to the police that they killed the tiger accidentally. They wanted to trap wild pigs in the Bacheli forest range. A tiger wa...