Amur Tigers

[brotherbear]

Great Soul of Siberia.
Even at a glance, I could tell they were huge. There was probably only one tiger in Lazovsky with a paw this size: Khajain. Before Khajain took over Lasovsky, his prints had usually been found in the south of the region. This meant he'd been born there. It was possible he was related to Bloody Mary, whose territory was in southeastern Lazovsky. It was unlikely that they had a parent-child relationship because there wasn't enough of an age difference, but they might have been siblings or half-siblings. They were both over ten years old and in their prime. 
Khajain's footsteps took a detour before Urine Rock and led to a birch by the mountain path. There are claw marks on the thick tree trunk. It seemed he had dug his claws in as high as he could on the trunk and then dragged them down. The claw marks were over three meters high. I could barely reach their height by standing up straight and raising my walking stick above my head. Tigers compete with one another by leaving the thickest claw marks on the highest spot. Most tigers leave their marks at about one and a half to two and a half meters, and the Great King is the only tiger who can leave a claw mark at the highest point. Above the base of the trunk was a black stain from years and years of tiger urine. There was some yellowish hair on the black mark. Khajain had made his claw mark and then rubbed his face and neck against the urine stain to cover the scent of other tigers with his own. Tiger hair has a unique scent that can also be used to mark territory in spots other animals and tigers frequent. 
The number of territory markers one tiger leaves is far greater than you might think. We have yet to discover the correlation between the number of tigers in a given region and the number of territory markers they leave, but it's clear that the more tigers that use a certain path, the more marks each of them leave. If one tiger leaves a territory marker, this triggers a competitive spirit in other tigers who also rush to leave a mark. Reply