Big cat and Bear tale

[Vinay]

Tigers eat sloth bears, don’t they?

In India’s jungles tigers sometimes kill sloth bears. And eat them for breakfast – and lunch and dinner if there’s anything left over. Although the shaggy sloth bear, one of four species of bears found in India, has a fearsome reputation for unprovoked aggression, Baloo is obviously no match for Shere Khan. Bear hair in tiger scat is not an unusual sight in forests where the two species coexist. My friend, Dr. K. Yoganand, a wildlife biologist who studied sloth bears in Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, not only witnessed many aggressive encounters between bears and tigers, he even photographed a tiger feeding on a fresh sloth bear kill. Obviously there is little love lost between the two species, which makes the incident I’m about to narrate rather unique.

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This tigress (and her two cubs) in Panna fed on this sloth bear kill for four days. Photo by K.Yoganand


After what seems like an eternity, but is in fact 20 minutes, we hear the loud woofing alarm calls of a sloth bear from the patch of forest that the chital had been suspicious of. Tense Anticipation in the tower. All binoculars now riveted in the direction of the hidden mystery. Five minutes later a large male tiger steps out of the patch of forest and into the view line, about 200 meters from where we are seated.

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As we watch in disbelief, it is followed by an obviously agitated sloth bear that begins charging towards the predator. The big cat turns around, and we brace ourselves for a horrendous battle resulting in one very dead bear. Instead, confounding our belief, and standing conventional wisdom on its head, the tiger calmly flops down and contemplates the bear with complete equanimity!

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The nonplussed bear then walks towards the tiger and, when it has approached it to within spitting distance, rises up on its hind legs.

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The tiger’s reaction? A big yawn. The anticipated calamity is turning into a comedy, with the bear dancing around the tiger.  The cat regards the bear much like an indulgent Labrador would the family toddler. After shuffling about for a couple of minutes and checking out the tiger from various angles the bear turns around and retreats into patch of forest where it came from.

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At which point the tiger lazily gets to its feet, walks a few yards in the opposite direction, flops to the ground again and goes to sleep.

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Drama over, we turn to Ullas Karanth and ask him “what the hell was all that about?!”. Here is his interpretation of what took place: “it is likely that the bear had cubs with her in the patch of forest when the tiger crossed paths with them. The woofing alarm call we heard earlier would have been the female warning the tiger off. She probably followed him out into the clearing to make sure he was heading away from her cubs. As for the tiger, his belly was full and he was not interested in food. When not hunting, tigers are often totally disinterested in the presence of prey. I suppose if this cat could feel ‘amusement’, as we did, he probably just found the bear’s antics entertaining.


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btw Bears are too-much over rated here.They are herbivorous(very little meat content) like deer/boar and on average half the weight and half powerful as buffalo which are regularly hunted by Tigers or Lion pride.   Reply