Terai vs Assam

[parvez]

(11-06-2016, 11:39 AM)Jimmy Wrote: Thanks @parvez, I am posting what I know, also you guys must know more about Corbett and Indian parks. I am taking Nepal side of Terai and taking as a reference though i know that may have its own limitation. Now regarding your quriosity, actually nepal doesn't lack buffaloes they are just in different reserves that does not contain tigers. So probably tigers evolved in terai also to take them but also other fleetfootd prey alongside with it and also traverse mountains habitat to search out gaurs and serows. So different tigers having differnt capabilities and then producing offsprings will have genes that will cancel any extremes and be of an avg to fit in any environment. In kaziranga it's quite differnt, prey overlaps, congregation of swamp inhabitants and basically the density in one single area I think is the major factor. All tigers experience the same prey no matter where the habitat inside kaziranga so they must have evolve d to be an specialist of the same area I.e to kill large bovine or a swamp specialist that's my humble opinion. For eg if you bring a hulking tiger of kaziranga and let it out on a mountainous terrain of Chitwan to hunt sambar and serows I think it will find catching local prey difficult so that's what different in these habitat. Though I doubt even a huge male Chitwan will prefer this kind of habitat for prey.

I got your point jimmy. I too used to think like that in my early days of discussion. Stabilisation of prey is what you should be discussing. Kaziranga tigers from grasslands will be living in same grassland habitat for generations with the same prey. So there is only one way to evolve while in chitwan they have to migrate from one area to other which are diverse on their own. So there are two different habitats to get adjusted to and evolve. They must be feeling the stress or confused during evolution for next generation. They are uncertain as to which genes should be passed on. While in kaziranga there is only one kind of habitat in grasslands they are sure to pass on which kind of genes to their offspring right. In this way they must be growing stocky and completely muscular. The stabilized tigers in same habitat if mated must produce these tigers. It will be interesting to know if the old school Nepal tigers were as stocky as present Assam tigers as these Nepal tigers had vast grasslands for larger areas. Reply