ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[Shadow]

(10-21-2018, 02:49 PM)brotherbear Wrote: Very nice post Shadow. In the wilderness, I believe that tigers normally choose bears at least 100 pounds ( 45 kg ) smaller than themselves as potential prey. It is my opinion that occasionally  a tiger will misjudge the size of the bear and end up in a bloody battle with a mature grizzly she-bear; a hard-earned meal. A grizzly normally leaves his mother at three or four years old and it is these sub-adults that a tiger will most often target. 
On the other side of the coin, a grizzly that dares to challenge a tiger over a carcass will only challenge a big cat smaller than himself; probably by two or three hundred pounds. I believe it is more about the size rather than the sex of the tiger. Neither the tiger nor the grizzly has a desire to find his fighting limitations. When a wild beast is injured, there is no first aid or emergency room for him. Life in the wild is harsh. 
 
There probably has been fierce bloody battles between full-grown males of both species ( over the past million years I'm sure ). My old friend Charger1 saidi it best I believe, "It would be a case of unstoppable force meets immovable object. Anything can happen."

Yes, there is a lot of speculation always in this kind of matters with only quite limited information available. One way to approach is to use logic and known behavior of animals. It would be insane for any predator to make all the time as suicidal attacks as possible. There are "hard targets" which are hard to kill, but biggest risk of failure is basically need to hunt again. Then "hard targets", which are hard to kill and also most probably fight back inflicting injuries or even kill attacker. For some reason males of these species are very seldom bothered by each others, whatever that reason then is. But it is logical to think, that in time some lesson has been learned by both of these species. Otherwise there would have to be a totally different situation.

Still I am more interested about poaching of tigers and how it could be stopped. It is a shame, that even in these days there are black markets endangering also tigers among many other species. Reply