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Tiger Directory
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 Quote:If someone thinks that we already know what is a tiger, it is completely wrong. [img]images/smilies/tongue.gif[/img] Rightly said Guate. Couldn't agree with you more on this ![img]images/smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]    Great info Vijay Rajan. Thanks for sharing. Now here is something interesting on Kaziranga tigers, which I posted some time back at AVA. RARE GLIMPSE OF KAZIRANGA TIGERS When it comes to adult male tigers, they usually avoid each other. But in areas where there is high tiger density, things can happen out of norm. There is only one recorded incident where three adult male tigers with a female tiger shared a carcass of a dead rhino, by tolerating each others presence. This is the first time such a behaviour is noticed and captured in the camera. Do have a look at the documentary in the link given below. http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/751...-Kaziranga- 
In the case of Kaziranga, it is important to interpret this information correctly. For example, they say that these three males were "adults" just based in they visual interpretation, but this is incorrect. For example, Sunquist (1981) and Sunquist & Sunquist (1988) explained this cases with the specimen M104 from Chitwan. This was a young male of only 159 kg, however in body dimensions he was already of 289 cm in total length. So, at first sight, he looks like a full grow male tiger, and if a naturalist would see the Sauraha male (his father) with him, would interpret that male tigers tolerate other males in they territory, which is highly incorrect.
Fiona Sunquist concluded in her book "Tiger Moon" (which I have buy now [img]images/smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]) that those sights of "adult" tigers in large groups are just misinterpretations of family groups of young adults before they separate. In this case, what happen in Kaziranga was probably just the female tiger with her three cubs, or four brothers for a litter, or even the dominant male with her "wife" and two young. As we can see, there are several forms to interpret this case, and this is the problem with the qualitative information, there is no verification and the author don't know the origin, age and relation of those tigers. In fact, in one of the close ups we can see the pink nose in one of those males, and his young looking face, it is certain that it is a cub, more correctly, a young adult before disperse. Just one thing is sure, male tigers DON'T tolerate other male tigers, they only tolerate they own sons, and normally only up to they maturity, although in Ranthambore, it seems that male tigers share part of they territory for they sons, but this most be studied trough several observations in order to get quantitative and statistical data, just like in the case of Chitwan. Kaziranga MOST be studied like Chitwan, this is a heaven of life, an incredible area with the largest tigers and its largest preys. Pictures and scats studies are not enough, we need to radiocollar some tigers, monitor them and then, the real information will arise and I bet it will be awesome! [img]images/smilies/tongue.gif[/img]  
Good post, Guate. I saw the short film (a nice one) some years ago (thanks for posting it, Apollo) and got to the same conclusions.
I remember a letter in the JBNHS about a congregation of tigers. The one who wrote the letter, R.C. Morris I thought, happened to be close and hunting. He shot different (immature and adult) animals in one beat and reported on his findings. In some circumstances, different adult males can be attracted to one a female in heat. I'll see if I can find it. 
I agree with everything other than "collaring"
Just because tigers have died from the stress induced, capture methods or Misjudged drugging. I believe T24 (may be a different tiger) is so aggressive towards people because he was captured and collared and still holds resentment towards humans because of it. At least it was a thought, Vijay may have been the one to say it, but Im sure he could clarify. I think camera traps with motion alerts should be monitered at all times and placed through out the jungle. Capture should only occur if a tiger is in medical need do to unnatural circumstances. As much as we want them to weigh every big male tiger out there, technically it serves no real purpose in conservation so it shouldnt be a priority. IMO (08-23-2014, 12:17 AM)'Pckts' Wrote: I agree with everything other than "collaring" Interesting info on Tiger behaviour from Kaziranga & Chitwan. I couldn't agree more with Pckts on the issue of Radio Collaring solely due to the tremendous stress it induces on the animal. As far as T-24 is concerned, while he is extremely comfortable with humans on vehicles, he doesn't tolerate the presence of humans on foot. But that's a general trait amongst most "dominant" & aggressive males. The 6 humans he has killed in the past had 1 thing in common. Each one of them (Forest Guard, Labourer, Illegal Cattle grazer et al) happened to be on foot, deep inside the jungle. (08-23-2014, 12:17 AM)'Pckts' Wrote: I agree with everything other than "collaring"As far I know, there is not a single case of a tiger dead from stress or misjudged drugs. In fact, the only cases, in Nepal, of dead tigers are the female tigress of Nepal that died from overheating (she was in bad shape) and the Sauraha male, which was just a stupid accident. From then, no other tiger have died in India for collaring. In Russia, the method of the snare was the problem, but in Kaziranga, the proper method should be the baiting, and now that we know that it is possible to subtract the stomach content, knowing the weight of the bait at the beginning, this method have proved to be very reliable to capture tigers and to take reliable weights. Measure tigers do have a conservation purposes. Check that through this data, Russian scientists compare how the low prey base affected the developing of the large morphology of the Amur tigers. Also, it will be possible to compare the sizes of tigers from different areas and know how the prey base affect (or not) the size of this animals. For example, in Nepal, the prey base is optimum and large tigers born there. However, tigers in Panna have a very low prey base, but still, tigers there are huge, with the scientific record from India at 250 kg. On the other side, Nagarahole tigers live in a tiger "paradise" with one of the largest prey base in the world. However, the tigers in this area are no near those from Panna. Finally, the Sundarbans tiger, which are in fact from the Bengal subspecies, based on DNA, have the smallest prey base and develop sizes as small as the extinct Bali tigers. Those points are interesting to be studied, compared and can provide a much clear idea of what tigers need to be "what they are". Finally, don't believe those stupid articles from 2009 when a crazy Bangladesh journalist blamed scientist of killing tigers. He was just a stupid man trying to be famous. At 2014, only TWO tigers, from over 100 captured in the entire subcontinent have died and none of them seems affected by "stress". (08-23-2014, 11:08 AM)'GuateGojira' Wrote:(08-23-2014, 12:17 AM)'Pckts' Wrote: I agree with everything other than "collaring"As far I know, there is not a single case of a tiger dead from stress or misjudged drugs. In fact, the only cases, in Nepal, of dead tigers are the female tigress of Nepal that died from overheating (she was in bad shape) and the Sauraha male, which was just a stupid accident. From then, no other tiger have died in India for collaring. I remember specifically reading about numerous tigers that were captured, weighed etc. They stated that 2 of them died from over drugging, and I have read about tigers dying from stress of captures or injuries sustained in irresponsible trapping methods. I will have to search around tomorrrow to research it more. I just truly believe that "prey densisty or conservation" has no need for capture. Camera traps have literally changed the way we monitor cats now, they are just as affective and cause 0 stress on the cat. You can monitor prey the same way that they monitor cats. Remember, it wasn't until camera traps that we started ID'ing cats by stripes. They can monitor prey the same way IMO.
Found some interesting info on collaring....Permission and animal capture issues in IndiaDespite the invaluable help offered by radio telemetry in animal conservation, government agencies still hesitate to grant permission for such studies since the technology is invasive, involving capturing and handling the target species, whose population in the wild may be small. We asked researchers to rank the permission process in India as easy, difficult or very difficult. Of the respondents, 60% ranked the process as difficult and very difficult. The issues regarding permissions for scientific research in India were discussed in detail by Madhusudan et al.[50]. Government policies have improved since then, yet the issues have not been resolved satisfactorily. We believe that new guidelines issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, for scientific studies in protected areas [51] offer some relief to researchers. However, permission for radio-collaring has to go through various agencies at state and national levels and state governments have yet to comply with the new guidelines. There is a necessity for a centralized and uniform system to grant permissions and for guidelines for capturing and handling wild animals. Centralizing the permission system would give an element of predictability to the outcome of proposals put forward by researchers. The guidelines should consider the conservation status of the species and the criticality of the information proposed to be collected.Animals may experience negative effects due to collaring [52-54], though this issue is debatable [55,56]. So far mortality during immobilization and radio-collaring has been remarkably low in India. In some unfortunate cases of mortality occurring during radio-collaring, the press and media in India generated an acrimonious debate over the use of radio-telemetry as a tool. In the first such incident, five tigers died after two months of a collaring exercise in Nagarhole NP. However, investigations revealed no relation between the radio-collaring and mortality. One tiger died due to pulmonary disease, one was old and three others died in territorial fights on different occasions. Only one of these tigers was collared, and three of the four collared tigers were alive during this incident [57,58]. Criticism of radio-collaring is misplaced considering the success during tranquilization and collaring in the majority of the studies. It is also relevant to mention that the assessment of the health and metabolic activity of an animal to be restrained is based on an ocular estimation and the probability of rare accidents cannot be reduced to zero. The World Health Organisation has reported that medical errors are one of the top causes of mortality in hospitals [59], but this does not cause us to stop medical interventions. The key is to weigh the benefits of telemetry studies to the overall population and for conservation rather than consider individual animal-specific issues.ConclusionsThe fundamental issue in any invasive research is the criticality of the information proposed to be collected and its relevance to the overall conservation of the species. Therefore the data generated should be of good quality and easily accessible to all concerned. We believe that researchers also need to be aware of the entire gamut of issues relating to radio telemetry. Our experience during this review is that details of study methodology and the specification of equipment are not readily available. It was also observed that a large amount of data is either missing or there is a reservation among the researchers to share the data. In view of the rapid development of radio-telemetry tools, managers and researchers should have easy access to the performance parameters of the new tools to enable them to choose appropriate devices for their study. Often low funding for conservation projects and problems with the permission process for such studies do not allow researchers to access new technology. The prejudged efficacy of such technology in Indian conditions, on the basis of the experience of other researchers, will obviate the uncertainties involved in using a particular device. Keeping proper records of collaring and tagging and sharing data amongst researchers would also help future studies. These will give clear and useful feedback to the manufacturers as well, so that they can improve the quality and performance parameters of their products. Information on the failure of collars should be discussed freely and should not be interpreted as a failure of the research projects. Discussion of positive and negative experiences would help to refine the technology and improve its efficiency. Coordination amongst the institutions in India and individual researchers working in wildlife research and information technology holds promise that this technology can be adapted for India with enhanced efficiency and reduced costs and it will be less invasive in use. http://www.animalbiotelemetry.com/content/2/1/4
Seems like its still a little hearsay on what actually occurs during capture. Hear is a interesting point "The World Health Organisation has reported that medical errors are one of the top causes of mortality in hospitals [59], but this does not cause us to stop medical interventions." Not sure how I feel about this, just because medical errors happen and unforseen complications happen, that is because there is no other alternative. These tigers don't need to be captured, they are captured for our interest. I still believe that we can accomplish everything we need to conserve all these animals with a less intrusive way.
In fact, the article that you post here prove my point, radio-collaring tigers is relative safe and should be applied in order to understand tigers. At least this is the case in India. I will not touch the case of Russia, as they use completely different methods and drugs, and as far I know, there has been no incidents in the few specimens captured in Thailand and Sumatra.
Techniques like camera traps and scats analysis are unable to show the REAL ecology of tigers. There are only indirect methods, that although are HIGHLY valuable, they are unable to show us the ecology, behavior and interspecific relations of the species. Sadly, for that reason, the studies of Dr Karanth are not as deep as those of Dr Sunquist and Dr Smith in Nepal, for example. In fact, Dr Karanth don't captured more tigers because the government blame him for the death of five tigers, but at the end, NONE of them died from the captures, but from natural causes. Even more, the old male T-01 was already injured by another tiger in the neck, and although they tried to cure him, he died in a few months. About this: "The World Health Organisation has reported that medical errors are one of the top causes of mortality in hospitals [59], but this does not cause us to stop medical interventions." This proves very well that captures are relative safe and should NOT be stopped. Let's review the scientific captures: 1. Chitwan: 49 specimens captured (Smith et al. 1983) - Deaths: two specimens, one old female and Sauraha (an accident). 2. Nagarahole: 4 specimens captured (Karanth, 1993) - Zero deaths. 3. Panna: 7 specimens captured (Chundawat & Malik, 2010) - Zero deaths. 4. Kanha: 10 specimens captured (Vattakaven et al. 2010) - Zero deaths. 5. The Sundarbans: 9 specimens captured (Several authors) - One death, but indirectly, the female was in bad shape. In fact, ALL the captured specimens were in bad shape, sadly. 6. Ranthambore-Sariska: 5 specimens captured (Several authors) - Zero deaths. From 84 radiocollared specimens, only three (3.6 %) died in the captures. This show how safe has been the capture of tigers in India and Nepal. Take in count that the number of tigers captured in Nepal is higher, as the document of Smith et al. (1983) don't take in count other specimens captured in the later years. Now, take in count that these six regions were worked by scientists, true professionals in the field. About the captures made by the park rangers and other "second hand" people, I can't speak. These 6 are the studies that I know and those that I can speak. In this order, if new studies would be allowed, they MOST be supervised and carry on by true scientists of great reputation. Conservation and prey density are good to keep tigers alive and the Camera traps are excellent for this, but to know, to REALLY know what is a tiger, we need to work with them directly. Check that what Valmik Thapar have done in Ranthambore for over 30 years of study, the Smithsonian Nepalese Tiger Project done it in 10 years, and with quantitative data, no less. Finally, check what Dr Ragu Chundawat want to say on the issue:  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author Hope this helps to prove my point. [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img] |
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