and fronted by a shingly threshold – has been passed down
from mother to daughter for generations.
Essential to a good birthing den is a plentiful supply of
prey nearby. For the first two months of the cubs’ lives,
while the tigress is feeding them solely with her milk, she
will be tied to the area – hardly ever hunting farther than
1km from the den. After this most critical period, the cubs
follow her as she hunts ever more widely through her
range. At six months they are weaned, and – if they survive- they will gradually disperse at about 20 months old, or
when her next litter is born.
It’s a big ‘if ’. However efficient the tigress, she cannot
transcend the limits prescribed by evolution – limits making
young tiger cubs extremely vulnerable to all sorts of threats.
Evolution is like a cost-benefit exercise. It has spawned two
broad strategies for many mammals, depending on whether
they are destined to kill or be killed – predators or prey.
If you’re in the latter category – a deer, antelope, goat or
another even-toed ungulate,
perhaps – then you produce
large, precocious babies,
necessitating long pregnancies.
The encumbrance of a hefty
belly does not interfere with
your daily feeding regime since
you don’t have to chase after
A tigress is capable of prodigious feats of strength, most
often displayed when moving a large kill to a secluded
place where her cubs can feed safely. Chuck McDougal,
who studied the tigers of Chitwan in Nepal for many years,
recorded a tigress dragging most of a huge sambar deer over
1km into dense scrub, and another that heaved a buffalo
she had killed up a sheer precipice before hauling it several
hundred metres into a ravine.
If her cubs survive, a mother will still be doing most of the
hunting for them even when they are 18 months old. Until
the cubs’ canines develop fully, at about 14 months, they are
incapable of holding and killing prey. Even then, it will be
many more months before they are proficient hunters – and
by then they will be as big as their mother.
In central India’s Kanha and Bandhavgarh reserves I have
often seen mothers caring for four full-grown cubs. These
tigresses are catering for five tigers, so must kill a decent-
sized deer every four days – ideally a sambar, which weighs
150–300kg, or at the very least a spotted deer (chital), a male
of which weighs 65–80kg.Ideal homes
The quality of a tigress’s home range – how much prey it
holds, how amenable the landscape is to hunting – and how
skilfully she exploits its features are key factors in the success
of her family’s life. Her choice of birthing den, for instance,
is of vital importance. Whether it’s a cave, a hollow tree-bole,
a dense grassy tunnel or a deep tangle of bamboo, it must be
protected from disturbance, bush fires and flash floods, and
defensible against leopards and other predators.
If it’s available, a tigress may choose the den in which she
herself was born. In the forests of Bandhavgarh, for example,
one idyllic cave – cooled by the pools of a permanent streamFrom top: Danny Green/naturepl.com; Nick Garbutt/naturepl.com; Andy Rouse
“At birth a tiger cub is
tiny, its eyes and ears
sealed, its chances of
surviving the first
year just 50:50”Top: a tigress in
Bandhavgarh
performs a Flehmen
response, tasting the
air for the scent of
a male – a potential
mate or threat.
Above: this male,
about 20 months old,
sports quills in his
cheeks after trying to
tackle a porcupine