TIGER
The tiger is the best hunter among animals. It is the most powerful killer on four legs. It is the biggest cat of all, even bigger than the mighty lion. Its whole way of life revolves around killing. When nighttime comes, it goes out in search of its favourite prey, which is usually a deer. Every adult tiger lives and hunts by itself. It has no choice but to live in the forests of Asia. Because the plants are so thick, hunting in a group wouldn’t work.
The tiger’s way of killing is to get as close to its prey as it can without being seen. Here, its beautiful striped coat comes in handy. Its orange fur has black stripes all over it that make it almost invisible when it crouches very still in the undergrowth. It can’t be seen because the markings break up the shape of its body.
The tiger never sneaks up on its prey from the same direction as the wind, because the breeze would carry the scent of the big cat to its victims. Deer have a great sense of smell and could quickly tell when something bad was close by. So, a tiger that is stalking its prey must always move toward it with the wind. Then, the scent of the prey is blown toward the tiger, which helps it check for any movement. However, the tiger’s own scent is blown away, which is safe. After getting as close as it can by slowly creeping, stopping, crouching, and then getting closer again, the tiger finally comes out of hiding and makes a lightning-fast dash straight at its prey. Its body is so heavy that it can’t run very far. In fact, it has little chance of winning if its last dash is more than 30 metres long.
Even though it is very strong, the tiger only kills about once out of every twenty times it tries. It hunts most evenings and will try to catch an animal several times a night. However, because animals move so quickly, the great cat will usually only catch something once a week. When a tigress has cubs to feed, she hunts more and kills on average once every five days. The kill itself is quick, and the prey doesn’t go through much pain. The tiger leaps forward, knocks its victim to the ground, and grabs it with both of its huge front paws. The tiger’s huge, curved, needle-sharp claws dig into the flesh and hold it tight while the jaws close around the neck. When the prey is on the ground, the tiger suffocates it by squeezing its throat tight and holding on until it dies. The prey soon stops moving and dies because it can’t breathe in the vice-like grip. The great tiger may hold on to the victim’s neck for several minutes after it has killed it. This gives the killer time to calm down after the thrill of the hunt and makes sure the prey is really dead.
Then the tiger takes its kill into the bushes and starts to eat its warm flesh.
It can pull a prey animal that weighs up to 230 kilos behind it. Tigers have been seen opening the tiger of a particularly heavy prey and taking out the insides to make it lighter and easier to carry. In thick cover, away from other people’s eyes, it eats a huge meal of up to 30 kilos of meat in one night. (This is the same as eating nearly 300 hamburgers all at once.)
Usually, the tiger won’t leave its kill until it has eaten every bit of meat off the bones. If the prey is a big deer, this could take a few nights. Scavengers do not often find rich pickings at tiger kills. If a tiger has to leave a half-eaten kill for some reason, like to get a drink or visit on its cubs, it will first cover the body with leaves, twigs, and grass. The great hunter won’t leave its kill until it is completely out of sight of other animals that might want to eat it. Even then, it returns back as soon as it can. Tigers will also kill and eat wild pigs, wild cattle, and sometimes even young rhinos or baby elephants, not to mention the deer animals of nearby farmers. On extremely rare occasions, a tiger has been known to kill and eat a leopard. This usually happens when the leopard has been paying too much attention to the den where a tigress’s cubs are hiding. Once in a while, a tiger will also turn into a man-eater, but this happens much less often than the stories would have us believe. It is usually very afraid of people and tries hard to stay out of their way.
During a night of hunting, the tiger often has to go miles away from its home range. A tigress’ space can be up to 3 miles long and 4 miles wide, which is bigger than a medium-sized town. The male tiger’s space is even bigger. His home range is up to 5 miles by 8 miles, which is about the size of a big city. Tiger males will never let another male tiger into their territory. He shows that it is his by spraying his strong-smelling urine on things like tree stumps, rocks, or bushes that are important to him. These personal scent signals let other males know that they are moving into dangerous male. After carefully smelling them, he will probably turn away and go in a different direction.
Tigers mark their territory by scratching the bark off of tree trunks and logs that have fallen. This leaves bright white gashes in the wood that rivals who come into his part of the forest can see. Also, special glands on the bottoms of his feet leave a smell that rivals can smell. Tigers don’t have to fight with each other because they leave scent marks. They are so strong that a fight between two males could hurt almost as much for the winner as for the loser. If the winner of the fight hurt its leg and became lame, it couldn’t hunt for food for a while and would go hungry. So, when dealing with animals as strong as tigers, it is important to do everything possible to avoid real violence. All of their power must be kept, especially for killing their prey and not for attacking one another.
Male tigers won’t let other males into their patch of forest, and female tigers won’t let other females into their space either. The females also leave scent marks and patrol the edges of their territory to make sure that no other animals are trying to move in. But even though males keep females out of their territories and females keep males out of their territories, the two sexes sometimes meet as they prowl around their home ranges. When tigers meet, they have a special sound they make to say hello. It sounds like “fuf-fuf-fuf-fuf,” and it shows that the animals are getting along. When you meet a tiger in a zoo and make this sound, it will look surprised for a moment and then make the same sound back. This is how the tiger says “Nice to meet you.” Surprisingly, the lion does not use this signal, even though it is a close relative of the tiger.
Every two years, tigers have cubs. When the females are ready to mate, the nearby males are enticed to visit them by changes in the smells left on the bushes and rocks. If no males show up, the females may go looking for them on their own, leaving their own territory to do so. After a short time together, the male and female go their separate ways. When the cubs are born, the father won’t help care for or raise them. It is something that only the tigress can do.
This is a big problem for the mother, who has to leave her small cubs sometimes to go look for food. When they are very young, she often hides them in a cave or in a small crack in the rocks where they can’t be seen. She might hide them in clumps of long grass when they are bigger.
The cubs are most likely to be killed when she is out hunting. Large snakes like pythons may sneak up on them, kill them by crushing them, and eat them whole. Leopards, wild dogs, and hyenas are also on the prowl, so the mother must hurry back as soon as she has found something to feed. When the cubs are older, she sometimes comes back from a kill and throws up some of the meat she ate.
Her cubs love to eat this soft, half-digested meat, and she can wear them out with her milk this way. When she goes back to her cubs, she spends some time grooming their fur by licking them with her big, rough tongue. It is very important for them to keep their fur in good shape, which is hard for them to do when they are small.
She also spends a lot of time grooming her own fur because she has to make sure that any scratches or cuts she got while hunting are as clean as possible. She could get lame and make her strength. A tiger that is lame can’t hunt, and a tiger that can’t hunt dies of hunger quickly. So, being clean is important.
Tigers are animals that seem to like having nice things. When they get too hot in the tropical jungles, they search for a small pool to soak in and cool down. Everyone knows that house cats hate getting wet, but tigers love it. When it’s very hot during the day, they will spend long periods of time lying down in the water to cool off. The tigress will let the cubs join her if they are big enough.
Tiger cubs are strong enough to go hunting with their mothers when they are about half grown. They are still too young to take part in the killing, but they watch eagerly from nearby cover as the tigress stalks and attacks her prey. Then, when she brings back the kill, they run out to join her. As they watch, she uses her strong jaws to open up the body. When the skin is pulled back and the meat is exposed, she stops and lies down a few feet away. Then she lets her cubs eat the fresh meat before she starts to eat herself.
Because their mother has bright markings on the backs of her ears, the young tigers can easily follow her through the undergrowth. Each ear has a big white spot with a black edge around it. From a distance, this looks like a pair of big eyes, and the cubs can see it very clearly even though the rest of their mother’s long body is hidden in the tall grass. Because the markings are on the backs of the ears, the tigress’s prey can’t see them.
When two tigers are threatening each other, they use the same markings. When they get mad, they turn their ears around so their backs face forward. This shows the opponent their “eye-spots.” This is a sign that something is wrong. When the tigers are about two years old, they go through the last stage of being raised. It’s an odd, quiet time with no noise. One day, the mother tigress just gets up and walks away, leaving her cubs on their own. She didn’t turn around and never returns back. Then, for the first time, the young animals will have to take care of themselves and make all of their own kills if they want to stay alive in the jungle. When they are very young, many of the cubs die. Most of the time, only one out of every two or three cubs makes it to adulthood. Before they are big enough to scare away all the killers who try to attack them, the others will become prey themselves.
Those tigers that do grow it to adulthood don’t manage much of a threat. The animals that live in the jungle. Only people who hunt can give them food. a very big danger. Over the past few hundred years, unfortunately, more and more men with guns have moved into the forests and killed as many tigers as they could find. Some men did it to protect their farm animals, others to get the beautiful tiger skins to keep as trophies, others to show how brave they were, and still others just for fun.
Men like this are looked down upon now, but in the past, they would often brag loudly about their hunting successes. One Maharajah said, “I only have 1,150 tigers in my bag.” It’s not surprising that the beautiful tiger is now a rare animal and that only about 4,000 of them live in the wild. Even fewer people were with them than this. But there are now places set aside just for tigers where hunting isn’t allowed and farmers aren’t allowed to live. In these reserves, there are a lot of wild deer and other prey animals, so the big cats don’t go hungry. Even though they don’t have as much room to roam as they used to, they don’t seem to be in danger of being completely wiped out.
