The Tiger

A specialist eye veterinarian decided that a 17-year-old Sumatran tiger, Ratna, had injured her left eye when, perhaps, it had been jabbed by a stick of bamboo in her enclosure. Sometime earlier she had had a cataract operation on the eye but in this instance, it was a first. Apparently, cataract operations on tigers are not that uncommon but it was a first to remedy a corneal ulcer and a deteriorating eye. Ratna a Sumatran tiger with corneal ulcer in her left eye. Photo: Shepreth Wildlife Park The surgeon is Dr. David Williams from the Queen's Veterinary School Hospital at the University of Cambridge. After two months of post-operation monitoring, he declared that he was delighted with the outcome and that he was able to "sign Ratna off". The eye has fully healed. Corneal surgery is not uncommon on domestic cats and dogs but it requires a lot more anaesthetic on an adult tiger, for obvious reasons. Ratna lives it Shepreth Wildlife Park near Cambridge, UK. She was move...

I am dictating this using Dragon Dictate and this well-known software automatically capitalizes the word "Tiger". It always does this and, in my opinion, it is incorrect because the word "tiger" is not a proper noun. It describes the tiger generally. And therefore, it should not be capitalised. If the word "tiger" is used as part of the description of a tiger species such as "Siberian tiger" it is always in lowercase i.e. not capitalized but the word "Siberian" is a proper noun and therefore it should be capitalized. In conclusion, therefore, the word "tiger" is not capitalised normally but you will see it capitalised nonetheless. In fact, the renowned writer and zoologist, Dr. Desmond Morris, in his book Cat World always capitalizes the word "tiger" (and all the wild cat species). His book was published in 1996. It is entirely possible and plausible that the conventions regarding the capitalisation of the word ...

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 ...