Are Tigers 'Brainier' Than Lions?

[Pckts]

(11-01-2014, 09:46 AM)'GuateGojira' Wrote:

(10-25-2014, 11:35 PM)'tigerluver' Wrote: I can't remember where I read this, but I've heard of male tigers peacefully waiting at a kill. This scenario probably occurs often with that Ranthambore dynasty.


 

In fact, the first one in report this case was Schaller (1967), when he found a male that was waiting his turn to eat from a prey killed by one of its females, which also had its cubs, playing with the male. Latter, Valmik Thapar (several books and tv shows) observed this same patern in the tigers of Ranthambore, where males often respect the place of the female and he also observed cases when the male made the kill, but when the female and its cubs arrived, he give them "priority" over its own kill! I have not observed this behaviour in lions or any other cat (although there are some cases of males sharing the prey with they sons, but not with the females). I still found the words of Jim Corbett very accurate: "The tiger is a gentleman".

In Nepal, this type of behavior was not observed because the habitat is too close (Sunquist, Pers. Comm., 2009). However, the evidence suggest some type of "familiar" behavior, specially between the territorial male (T-105 - Sauraha) and his 18 years old son (T-104), most in the last days before T-104 left (Sunquist, 1981).
 

 

I'd be carefull using singular examples as rules. Remember the Machli doc, where she was on a kill then a male rushed in, fought her, dominated her, then ate her kill. It will always depend on the individual male, I've seen lions share kills with hyennas before, so its very hard to put a rule of thumb to them.

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