TIGERS
grass and leaves to catch them, and the slightly increased
risk of being caught while pregnant is far outweighed by the
benefit of producing babies that can feed themselves and run
away from predators almost as soon as they are born.
If you are a killer, the opposite is true. You cannot hunt if
you’re burdened by huge foetuses. You risk losing condition
and aborting the pregnancy. Better to give birth quickly to
the smallest possible young and rely on your own prowess
to defend them. You offset this risk by the benefit of a brief
gestation – on average for a tigress, just 103 days – enabling
you to replace the litter promptly if you lose it.
Many litters are lost. If small tiger cubs are discovered
by other carnivores such as leopards, striped hyenas or dholes
(wild dogs) while their mother is away, they have no defence.
They are also too weak to evade fire or flood. People may
kill them, too, even though
tigresses can be remarkably
restrained in their treatment
of human trespassers.
Another threat is disease.
Little is known about the
susceptibility of tigers to
disease in the wild, but new
research suggests that caninedistemper virus (CDV) is top of the list of infections afflicting
the big cats.
In addition, starvation is an ever-present threat to tiger
cubs, particularly in regions where prey becomes seasonally
scarce, or where it is widely dispersed – as in the Russian
Far East, home of the Amur subspecies. Meanwhile,
poaching of deer and other tiger prey deprives the cats of
food; conservationists suggest that this is actually a bigger
problem than the poaching of tigers themselves. Tiger cubs
are dependent on their mothers for such a long period that
going hungry is perhaps the biggest killer of all.
Even when the cubs’ canines have developed and they
start hunting, they may make mistakes. Their most dangerous
neighbour might be the porcupine – tasty but potentially
lethal. They may not know they should whack it on the
head; instead they seize the porcupine from behind as they
would other prey, becoming pin-cushioned with quills. If one
stabs in deep under the foreleg it is unreachable. It cannot be
chewed out and licked clean, but will fester until the cub
dies a lingering death from hunger and blood poisoning.
But the ultimate threat, the one that attracts the goriest
headlines, is infanticide: cubs being killed by a male of their
own species. Infanticide can occur when the father of the
cubs has died or been chased away, or even if he is merely
inattentive. A new male may, if he gets the chance, kill cubs in
the hope of mating with their mother. Normally she would
not be receptive until her cubs were fully grown, but if the“Conservationists
suggest that poaching of
deer and other tiger prey
is a bigger problem than
poaching of tigers”
Above: the
Ranthambore
female Noor (T39)
carries her cub.
The young start to
accompany her on
short forays at two
months old, but
struggle to keep
up with herA female watches her
17-month-old cubs feast
on a sambar deerHeavy sentences
face those who kill
tigers, but conflict is
inevitable in rural areas.
This one was killed in
BangladeshTIGERS