adhya Pradesh, India’s jungle state: a sunbeam
probes between the oval leaves of the sal trees,
almost parallel to the strong, straight trunks,
catching at last the white spots on the ears of a tiger cub.
Nothing moves. Nothing will move again for this baby
tiger. The little face peering up from the jungle floor is all
that is left of it. Last night a stranger, an alien male tiger,
rampaged into its life and ended it.
Such incidents are commonplace in the tiger’s world.
But, given that according to the IUCN there may be as
few as 3,000 tigers left in the wild, how can this infanticide
possibly be a useful survival strategy? How frequently does
it occur, and what are the other threats that young tigersface in their struggle towards adulthood?
At birth, a baby tiger typically weighs just 900g (the known
range is 785g–1.6kg). By contrast, the average birthweight for
human babies is about 3kg. And, while the human will grow to
25 times its birthweight, the tiger will reach 200 times its original
mass. At birth, the tiger cub’s ears and eyes are sealed, and it can
scarcely move. Its chances of surviving its first year are not much
better than 50:50. In fact, its only real asset in life is its mother.
A mother tiger is a formidable force of nature. Her
protein-rich milk will quadruple the cub’s weight within
its first month. After two months it will be strong enough to
move with her; after six the cub will be 35 times heavier than
it was at birth.Below: a tiger cub
nuzzles its mother,
the well-known
female known
as Noor (T39),
in Ranthambore
National Park.
Females raise their
cubs with no input
from fathersM
TIGERS