Personal Opinion & Speculations

[Spalea]

This question consists of comparing two ways of live , the first one in pride, the second one solitary adopted by two big feline predators, both approximately same size. No need to name them, I think.

First case: tigers surviving in Africa. The solitary male tiger would have to avoid meeting the male lions patrolling together their territory and the tigress the lionesses hunting together. The tigers being naturally a more elusive cat than the lions it would be possible by supposing that they could inhabit the most wooded zones/areas of the savannahs. But I frankly doubt that the tigers content themselves with not being the " first one on top " predator. Somewhat like we can see in Siberia when they have to coexist with the brown bears, each time it would be possible for one male to catch by ambush a lone lion it would try its luck. In my opinion. But of course too, the male lions keeping their territory would not support any rival. Thus they would tend to kill any tiger they could meet. So what can the tigers do ? Running not faster than the lions, climbing not up the trees... Life for them should be very difficult.

Then, as we can see in the videos about " Tigers in Africa ", the preys (buffalos, antilopes, wildebeests...) doesn't seem to know what attitude to adopt in front of a predator they have never seen before. Thus the hunt for these solitary tigers in Africa seems to be easier. On the other hand, when they killed a big prey they have to eat it quickly before a group of lions comes to oust them or before a pride of spotted hyenas comes to report them noisily to every predator in the vicinity. The tigers hate the publicity.

Second case: lions surviving in an indian dense forest. As we can see about lions living in ethopian forests, they are able to be more elusive than usual. The added challenge for them is to avoid too numerous confrontations with the huge predator previously dominating this biotop: the tiger. For that, the life in prides is their main advantage, the tiger staying the most efficient, the most natural predator in this kind of environment.

Like in Africa, the lions tend to live more in "open spaces" while the tigers would prefer to haunt the most wooded areas. To see that, they should share large areas. A thing still possible in Africa (the biggest parks reaching 30.000-50.000 square kilometers), but no more in India where the protected spaces mostly don't exceed 1000-2000 square kilometers in size. Reply