Hunting methods
Tigers, like other cats, are fond of the ambush. Generally, they can overpower their prey from any angle, using their massive body size and strength to knock even a large prey animal off balance. Once prone, the tiger bites the back of the prey'sneck, often breaking the spinal cord, and piercing the windpipe along with the jugular vein or carotid artery. For the largest prey, a bite to the throat is preferred. After biting, the tiger then uses its muscled forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground and keeping it there. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies, usually quite rapidly after the attack.Powerful swimmers, tigers are known to kill prey in the water as well as on land. Some tigers have even ambushed boats for their catches of fish.
Tigers never hunt humans except when deprived of their normal prey. Probably only 3 or 4 tigers out of every 1000 tigers kill a person as prey in their lifetimes, and are called "man-eaters". The usual man-eater is an injured or ill tiger which can no longer catch its preferred prey and must resort to a smaller, slower target. Sometimes a mother tiger, who is dull of tooth and arthritic of joint, will teach her cubs to hunt humans after she learned to do so to keep from starving when she could no longer capture antelope and deer. This is the likely source of young, healthy tigers who are man-eaters. Even though it is only the rare toger that hunts humans, since tigers bring down a kill every week or two, if able, some of the man-eaters of the past have each individually accounted for hundreds of death. The Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal have had a higher incidence of man-eaters, and it is there that some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans as prey.
In the wild, tigers can leap as high as 5 m and as far as 9-10 m, making them one of the highest-jumping mammals (just slightly behind cougars in jumping ability).
They have been reported to carry domestic livestock weighing 50 kg while easily jumping over fences 2 m high. Their forelimbs, massive and heavily muscled, are used to hold tightly onto the prey and to avoid being dislodged, especially by large prey such as gaurs. Gaurs and Water Buffalo weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. A single tremendous blow of the paw can kill a full-grown wolf or human, or can heavily injure a 150 kg Sambar deer.
Biology and ecology
Image:Tiger distribution.gif
Distribution of tigers in 1900 (red) and 1990 (green)
Adult tigers are solitary and fiercely territorial animals. A tigress may have a territory of 20 km² while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60-100 km². Male territories may overlap those of many females, but males are intolerant of other males within their territory. Because of their aggressive nature, territorial disputes are violent and often end in the death of one of the males. To identify his territory the male marks trees by spraying urine and anal gland secretions on trees as well as by marking trails with scat. Males show a behavior called flehmen, a grimacing face, when identifying the condition of a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 103 days and 3–4 cubs of about 1 kg each are born. The females rear them alone. Wandering male tigers may kill cubs to make the female receptive. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2–2½ years old that they leave their mother. The cubs reach sexual maturity by 3–4 years of age. The female tigers generally own territory near their mother, while males tend to wander in search of territory, which they acquire by fighting and eliminating a territorial male. Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on deer, wild boar, and wild cattle, including gaur and water buffaloes, young rhinos and young elephants, and sometimes, leopards and bears. Tigers also have been known to kill crocodiles on occasion [1], although predation is rare and the predators typically avoid one another. Siberian tigers and brown bears are a serious threat to each other and both tend to avoid each other. Statistically though, the Siberian tiger has been the more successful in battles between the two animals because bears taken by tigers are often smaller sized bears, however tigers can and do kill larger brown bears.[2] Even female tigers, which are considerably smaller than male tigers, are capable of taking down and killing adult gaurs by themselves. Sambar, wild boar and gaur are the tiger's favoured prey in India. Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken when they are left unprotected by their herds. A case where a tiger killed an adult female Indian rhino has been observed [3]. Moreover,
Tigers prefer large prey such as sambar, gaur and wild water buffalo because they provide more meat and last for many days, avoiding the need for another hunt. In all of their range, tigers are the top predators and do not compete with other carnivores other than the dhole or Indian wild dog, which makes up for its relative lack of strength by numbers. They do not prey on large animals such as adult elephants and rhinos, although they will prey on their young whenever they have an opportunity. However, a hungry tiger will attack anything it regards as potential food, including humans.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. In recent times, camera trapping has been used instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
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