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

[peter]

(03-06-2025, 08:06 PM)Apex Titan Wrote: @peter 

Professor. Wroe, in his video, showed this picture of the skull of an Asiatic black bear that was killed by a tiger.

An Amur tiger with broken canines killed an Asiatic black bear by crushing its skull with the stubs of its canines, reported by Tkachenko. This highlights the devastating bite force of a tiger, and shows that tigers, with broken canines, can even kill bears by destroying their skull.

Some years ago, I also saw pictures of the skull of an Ussuri wild boar that was killed by a tiger who crushed the boar's skull with a bite. There's no doubt, that in some cases, tigers do kill bears and wild boars by crushing their skulls with a lethal bite.

Asiatic black bear skull crushed by a tiger (Tkachenko):

*This image is copyright of its original author

Thanks Apex. Judging from the sutures (completely fused) and the teeth (quite a bit of wear), the skull most probably belonged to an oldish Himalayan black bear. 

As to tigers losing (some of) their canines. 

Some years ago, on a Russian forum, a paper was published about tigers captured with Aldrich footsnares. Some males, while trying to escape the snare, damaged their teeth. While, as Miquelle later said, there's proof of wild tigers with an incomplete set of canines doing just fine, it's also true healthy canines are of vital importance for big cats hunting large prey animals. 

Wild tigers often suffer from dental problems. Today, most of these are a result of natural causes (and age), but a century ago, in what used to be British India in particular, not a few were a result of an uncareful shot. In one of the books of Kenneth Anderson, there's a (true) story about a tiger that lost most of his teeth in this way. The result was most animals he hunted were able to escape. Humans, however, were not. After gaining quite a reputation, Anderson decided to hunt him. This tiger killed with his paws and used his claws to scrape the flesh from the bones, because he couldn't use his teeth anymore. Reply