Amur Tigers

[GuateGojira]

Tiger vs Bear in the Russian Far East:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Scientists from the Siberian Tiger Project have been working since 1992 and had found that the male tigers and male bears avoid each other because they know that they are a real danger form them and there is no need to enter in a futile fight.

Now, bears are known to follow young and female tigers and they steal them kills when they can. These are the “satellite” bears that specifically follow these relative small sized tigers, and in all cases, these are male bears. However, when a fight arises and if the bear wins, they are able to eat the dead tiger and there are several accounts of these situations in literature. However, the only male tiger killed in this fights was a 3 year old tiger that was still been feed by his mother, obviously not fully grown.

On the other hand, tigers don’t follow bears to steal they kills, they follow them to KILL them as kills, but only when they natural prey is scarce. There are also several records of tigers killing bears, and these are not only females, but also male bears of up to 320 kg. There is a case recorded by Jankovsky (quoted by Mazák, 1983) where he hunted a huge tiger that had killed and eaten an enormous male bear, however the tiger was also very large, estimated at no less than 300 kg, so there was some parity on the size. The modern records presents some tigers, like the male P-20 (AKA “Dale”) that specialized in killing bears of slightly over its own size (he rangend from 170 to 205 kg according with 3 captures). It seems that tigresses kill female bears and they cubs only, while male tigers can and do kill males and females (more biased to the second case, obviously).

So, in conclusion, male tigers and male bears avoid each other (there is no reason to fight), but they attack females in both cases (bears steal prey, and if they can, kill and eat; tigers directly kill and eat). It seems that the evidence suggest that tigers directly predate on bears, while bears are specialized in steal tiger kills and predate on them indirectly. Tigers dominate bears in the Russian Far East.

 

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By the way, peter, could you put the page of Mazák where he mention the large male bear killed by the record tiger?
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