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05-29-2014, 09:53 AM( This post was last modified: 05-29-2014, 10:00 AM by GuateGojira )
Maybe my next words will be a blasphemy for some people, but I think that maybe, just maybe, tigers are slightly more social than lions.
Why? How is possible that I could say this? Well, tigers themselves are my evidence.
We know that tigers are highly territorial, at least when plenty of prey is available. For example, in the single year than Schaller studied tigers in Kanha, he found that the male tigers were territorials but females no, although they had some particular areas that were used only by the owner of the home range. However, in 1977, Panwar (in Sunquist, 1981) studied the same population and found that after over 10 years, the Kanha NP had changed, there were more prey and the habitat was much better than in the time of Schaller. The results was that in this moment, Panwar found that the tigress were highly territorial, just like those of Nepal!
Nepalese tigers are highly territorial too. Although Sunquist (1981) stated that he had not found any injure in its radiocollared tigers, he recognize that Dr McDougal, with more time in the field, found several injures in the same tigers, caused by intraspecific conflicts. Latter documents of Dr Dave Smith and others showed that that injures were more severe everytime and cased dead in some cases and that this was caused because the available territory was now full, so new adults most travel or fight to found a territory, the worst of it was for the young males. In fact, they discovered that: 1. Males and females tigers are highly territorial. 2. Females tigers share part of the territory to its daughters, when they can. 3. Tigers are highly aggressive between them, when they are not related, but they respect they own territories and avoid conflict when they are related (they DO have familiar bounds and memory). 4. Most, if not all the tigresses of certain area are normally highly related, and although they are territorial, there are moments when mother, old daughters and the cubs of both, can be reunited, sometimes, with the presence of the territorial male, father of all the cubs.
Latter, the amazing observations of Valmik Thapar showed that the male tigers are incredibly good fathers. He observed territorial male tigers sharing kills with its “wives” and its sons. Further observations recorded a group of eight of nine tigers sharing a kill, all the individuals were related! It seems that tigers do group on kills and can share it without violence, but just because they are all family.
Using all this data, we can draw a wider idea of what is the behavior of the tiger in the wild: It seems that tigers are not antisocial, they keep contact with they own families and although they prefer to avoid close contact, this is more related with prey availability than aberration to see each other. Females share they kills with its daughters, when the prey is large (over 200-250 kg) and they feed amicably and in order, with the dominant tiger been the one that killed the prey, the sex of the tiger is irrelevant in these moments. Male tigers are true gentlemen, they share kills with its mates and kids and give them privileges over its own kills! This is something that can’t be seen in male lions.
These observations had been recorded by Schaller and Thapar (semi-open habitats) and inferred via radiocollared signals by Sunquist, Smith and Dinerstein (closed habitats). However, there are anecdotal reports in literature of tigers sharing kills and fathers caring and even feeding its young, but sadly, the myth of the blood-thirsty beast was stronger and those early observations were obscured as simple hearsay.
So, tigers are territorials and will not allow other tigers in its territories, but mothers can share kills with its older daughters in some type of “neutral zones” between its territories. This type of behavior has been described as an incipient tigresses “pride”, while the male tiger had a behavior closer to the male lions in Gir, although they present a bigger instinct for caring its own sons. The statements of Kailash Shankala, that tigers are not territorial, are incredible WRONG, as he never (he don’t even tried) know the relation between the tigers, and what he described as a “group of non-territorial tigers”, was in fact, a family, like the several observations of Valmik Thapar in Ranthambore.
Lions do hunt in prides and share meals, so they must be social, but most of the time they fight for it and conflicts are nasty. They tend to be antisocial when prey is scarce and for the male lion, they eat first and all the others in the pride can go to hell when he is feeding (he eat first, period!!!), although in some rare cases, when the prey is relative large, he shares part of it with its sons; when the prey is huge, all eat together, but never stop scratching each other.
Obviously, this behavior of the tigers is the norm in the habitats with good prey density, but is possible that some aberrant possibilities can happen in weird areas, like for example The Sundarbans, when territorial boundaries are erased every time that the tide goes up in the mangroves. However, recent studies show that tigers in the Russian Far East, despite the large territories and the incredibly low prey base, they also have the same ecology than tigers in Nepal: tigresses share part of its areas with its daughters but they have exclusive territories, while male tigers do have exclusive areas and only share them with the females in its territories.
I see a tiger group like a big family that like to live in they own areas and that respect each other. But this balance is broken when the male died and then, all the hell breaks loose. In Nepal, when Sauraha male died, there were hard years and for about 2 or 3 years, as far I remember, tigresses could not rise a single cub, as the male power was not established. The stability and power of the male tiger is BASIC in tiger sociability too, if there is a big strong male in the power, everything is Ok.
Do you still think that tigers are just a plain, bi-dimensional animal? [img]images/smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] I think NOT.
