Can a male Tiger have a successful face to face kill on a Adult Bull Gaur?

[Acinonyx sp.]

Tigers  can have a successful kill, here is one case I found



   


The only animal, brave and strong enough to take on single-handedly a formidable Indian Wild Gaur is a Tiger. But still, it is not an easy task even for a mighty Tiger to kill a fully grown Indian Wild Gaur, four to five times its own size. For any carnivores animal in the forest, an Indian Wild Gaur is no doubt, a formidable opponent. Their menacing horns can lethally impale a Tiger or a Lion in a nasty face-off situation.

The picture above was taken from the Mudumalai forest in Tamil Nadu a few days ago. We were told by our forest guide that they have received an information that the evening before a tiger had killed a mighty wild gaur a few miles inside the dense forest.

As we were inching closer to the place where our forest guide told us the carcass had rested, we were in fact listening for any sound that would give us some indication about the presence of the Tiger who could have killed the Gaur last night and would certainly be guarding the kill, sitting somewhere in the proximity and we knew, he wouldn’t take kindly to our approach either.

Later when we reached the spot, we could see the area was trampled with thick clumps broken like twigs. It was clear that both the beasts, one, the largest of all wild cats in the world and the other, the largest of all the wild cattle species had not backed out a little and it was a titanic battle between both. Whenever these two mighty animals fight each other, the outcome is not certain. Sometimes the Tiger will win and sometimes not.

We waited there for a few minutes, watching the massive carcass and admiring the power of this mighty bovine.

When we left the scene, feeling dejected by the whole episode, we knew, this is exactly the nature’s way of balancing the ecosystem or in other words, it's about the 'survival of the fittest'.

Ajan R Nair‎
December 26 - 2019 Reply