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

[johnny rex]

(01-15-2019, 07:27 AM)Wolverine Wrote:

(01-14-2019, 08:13 AM)peter Wrote:  He, like others, concluded tigers seem to push wolves out. This was the main argument their used to convince hunters in Sichote-Alin to protect tigers.

The reason hunters in RFE don't like wolves and prefer Amur tigers around is that wolves seems to diminish much more efficiently the populations of local herbivores. The toll Amur tiger is getting is … lets say (theoretically)...5-10% of total population of hoofed animals annually in the area while wolf packs in case of high density of wolves could exterminate... lets say... up to 20-30% (I forgot the exact numbers) of all herbivores in the area. The result is that hunters don't have what to hunt... They know that when Amur tiger inhabit the area grey wolves will keep away or avoid hunting in this particular area, so there will be more trophies and more meat for local hunters. Sometimes I red that scientists even intimidate the RFE hunters - "Do not poach tigers because the wolves will come and that will be twice worse for you!" And such intimidation in some cases is efficient.

The triangle between Amur tiger-dhole-grey wolf is interesting and somehow resembles the triangle lion-African wild dog-spotted hyena in Africa. Of course in the nature is not such a thing as 100% domination, but in general lions almost always dominate African wild dogs, African wild dogs usually (not always) dominate spotted hyenas because dogs packs have better coordinated pack organization and better team work than hyenas, while relations between lions and spotted hyenas could be in some cases quite messy and hostile with no clear domination. 
In same way Amur tiger almost always dominate grey wolf, Northern grey wolves usually dominate dholes, while relations between dholes and tigers are more soffisticated, and they could be mutually bold to each other. I mean in the Nature if specie A dominates specie B and specie B dominates specie C that doesn't mean that specie A will dominate specie C. 

In general I think for Northern grey wolves as largest canids is typical that they are aggressive towards other smaller canids like coyotes, foxes, jackals and in same time they are scared and terrified by the big fellines especially by the tigers. Dholes are opposite case, they are quite passive towards other canids obviously suggesting them as kind of "brothers" and quite bold and even said aggressive toward felines. For sure dholes don't panic in the face of tiger.

Here only 2 dholes chase away on the tree a leopard and the spotted cat obviously afraid of them:

If this tigress was weaker probably dholes could even attack her:

In same time old paintings from British India showing dhole packs killing tigers are probably highly exaggerated, there are no fresh scientific proves for such a cases:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Despite the drawing, I doubt a pack of dholes or any kind of canids want to mess with any male big cats. Maybe they will try to harass the females, but I'm really not sure about big males. Reply