B2 and Other Great Tiger Pics from India

[Pckts]

(12-29-2019, 11:23 PM)Junglelores Wrote:

(12-28-2019, 11:56 PM)Roflcopters Wrote: @Pckts @Pantherinae 
@ "Roflcopters"

One thing that I would like to add is though gaurs are the biggest prey available for central Indian tigers , bringing down a gaur s no easy task and except kolsa I haven't heard of any other place in central India where tigers prey on gaurs on a regular basis ... Gaurs are definitely on the list but not the staple diet ... Mostly it will be cheetals , sambar n boars.

 imo that's where the nutorious cattle killers have disticnt advantage , for a tiger to gain bulk it has to eat as much as possible and spend as little energy as possible ...

So for a tiger living in the core area doesn't have the luxury of having cattle on it's menu , and especially with the new anti slaughter laws in states of mp and Maharashtra theres an abundance of adandoned stray cattle in the areas surrounding the buffer jungle and they do stray into the jungles also.

I myself had seen on one occasion where khali had killed three buffalos and carcass just lying at hardly 50 mtrs apart.
And buffer zones especially in tadoba the natural prey density is very less compared to core zones .

While Gaurs are big animals and preying on them is no easy task they are preyed upon fairly commonly.
We were in Kanha for instance and CM had stashed a Gaur carcass which we could smell, I asked how often gaurs were taken and the driver said often which I believe since their numbers were so much higher there. Kanha is so massive with much more elevation changes and big sal trees that it makes viewing any predation or feeding more difficult.
Sambar and Barasingha are also extremely common there, Tadoba has a good amount of Sambar but no Barasingha which are said to be stupid prey animals and easier to catch, only slightly smaller than Sambar they are another advantage seen in Kanha.

The flip side in Tadoba the drivers said Gaur are taken in the buffer much more often than in the core zone and I barely saw any in pench so I doubt they're as common there.
No Gaur numbers matched the amount I saw in Kanha, it wasn't close as well as the Gaurs being much larger in Kanha from what I could see as well. 

In regards to Cattle killers, all central indian parks have access to them, Babdhavgarh may have the most notorious cattle killers of all but Kanha has villages right at the entry gate and cattle is everywhere, I'm sure they have access to them just as easy as anywhere else.
Even in Ranthambore you see huge amounts of cattle taken yet their Tigers have a lean look, for the most part cattle killers tend to look like Mr. X from Bandhavgarh or KG male from Kanha, both are notorious cattle killers and have the more soft body composition. Reply