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

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TIGERS IN NORTHERN INDIA AND NEPAL - PART V


p - Habits of some wild animals

Before he turned to the shoots, Smythies described the habits of some of the animals. He no doubt based his observations on personal experience. Himalayan black bears were omitted, because they were not considered carnivores. Smythies, like many others who hunted in northern India, didn't like them. The reason is they often were unpredictable, quarrelsome (see below) and dangerous, shooting first in most cases.

p1 - The tiger    

" ... The average tiger, lord of the jungle, is neither crual nor savage; like man, he kills for food, but, unlike man, he does not kill wantonly for sport. When he kills, he kills efficiently and almost instantaneously, and does not gloat over the agony of his victims. Having nothing to fear in the forest, he is completely fearless, but he does recognise man as an overlord, and when met by chance on a jungle path he politely turns aside and gives the right-of-way. This makes a chance encounter with a tiger a positive pleasure, one of the chief pleasures of a jungle life. (It is very different with the stupid quarrelsome bear, who, very often, does not politely turn aside and give the right-of-way.)

There are, of course, exceptions. An old and mangy tiger with decayed teeth or some physical defects, which cannot kill jungle animals, may turn cattle-killer, and then man-killer, and become a terror to a dozen jungle villages. A tigress with young cubs will first growl a warning and then attack and drive off any man or a party of men blundering near her young family. A hungry tiger, enjoying a succulent meal of venison or pork, will not willingly depart without protest. These exceptions do not disprove the general rule that the average chance-met and undisturbed tiger in the jungle is really a welcome, interesting, and friendly acquaintance, and not a source of fear or danger to man. But doubtless the average stranger to jungle life will not believe this.

In this book, however, this aspect of a tiger is not very evident, so it is the more necessary to mention it. When, however, a tiger is hunted and chivied and chased, he becomes annoyed. If he can find no way of escape, he becomes really angry. When cornered and wounded, his armament of claws and teeth, his tremendous energy and power, his superb pluck and fearlessness, combine to make him the most terrifying and the most dangerous animal of all the jungles. This is the view that is presented again and again in this book, which follows inevitably from the method of the Maharaja's shikar. But it is an abnormal view, as abnormal as the view the author once had of a tiger climbing a tall tree to knock his wife out of her high machan, and does not represent the typical live-and-let-live attitude of a tiger's life.

A Terai tiger, on the whole, has a grand time. He is so perfectly suited to his environment that he has no difficulty (unless diseased or maimed) in obtaining abundance of food and keeping in splendid condition. His tremendous shoulders and bulging muscles are in striking contrast to the unavoidable parodies of tigers in zoos all the world over, which do not cover ten of fifteen miles a night, nor break the great neck of a buffalo or sambhar stag. When about one year old, he leaves his mother and family and successfully fends for himself, in due course picking up a mate. The act of breeding by wild tigers has very rarely been actually seen, but has more often been heard, as it characterised by an appalling amount of noise. A tiger will often stay with his mate for years, successfully raising one family of cubs after another. If the male cubs do not leave when they should, sometimes trouble arises. The author knew a big tiger and tigress who lived together for seven years, and twice in that period the father killed one of his sons when about seven feet long - probably for becoming obstreperous with his mother. In each case there was not a mark on the cub's body, except tooth marks on the head, and the skull crushed and cracked like a walnut! Such is the strength of a big tiger's jaws ... " (pp. 22-23).

Here's a tigress from Corbett (close to Nepal):

*This image is copyright of its original author

p2 - The leopard

" ... Someone once wrote that the tiger is a gentleman, but the leopard is a bounder, a statement which is very largely correct. The dog-snatching leopard of hill stations and cantonments is a universal and unavoidable evil of Himalayan sanatoria. So is the goat and cow-killing leopard of jungle and hill villages. When he turns to man-killing he is a perfect terror. Where tigers abound, leopards are scarce, and vice versa. As tigers increase or decrease, leopards show a corresponding decrease or increase, and generally speaking leopards shun the vicinity of tigers. It is remarkable that on several occasions in the Maharaja's shoots, one ring should have enclosed both a tiger and a leopard.

Leopards are beautiful tree-climbers and very arboreal, and, as recorded elsewhere in this book, quite a number have been shot by the Maharaja up trees. Several cases are known of a leopard being treed by a pack of wild dogs. It is also quite common for a leopard to pull his kill up onto a tree.

The leopard excels even the tiger in its power to make itself invisible, and to move silently as a shadow. Sitting up in a quiet machan over a kill, one usually sees and/or hears a tiger approaching some way off, but a leopard - materialising out of thin air - is suddenly there, with no sound or sign how it arrived. In the ring shoots of Nepal, leopards sometimes manage to sneak out unseen, but a tiger never does.

It is interesting to see leopards hunting in couples, exhibiting team work. On several occasions a leopard has been seen lying concealed and motionless on the horizontal branch of a tree, while its mate manoevres about on the ground, trying to drive or frighten a sambhar hind or a herd of chital under that particular tree. And, reversing the position, a leopard has been seen climbing about on trees laden with numerous brown monkeys, trying to drive one or two to make a hasty dash from one tree to another along the ground where the leopard's mate was lying concealed, hoping to catch one on route ... " (pp. 25-26).

p3 - The wild dog

" ... The only other carnivorous animal of any importance in the foothill forests is the wild dog. The size of a collie, and as red as fox, the wild dog usually hunts in small packs of six to ten - not in hundreds as Kipling described in the jungle books. The method employed by a pack in killing their prey is, from the human point of view, altogether abominable. They are quite tireless and hunt their prospective kill ... for miles, in the end usually driving it into an open stream bed. The author once disturbed a pack in a stony river bed which had just brought down a sambhar hind. It was still alive, the flanks were bleeding from a score of bites and both eyes had been bitten out. But for the interruption, the pack would have started to eat it, helpless but still alive ... " (pp. 26).

Animals hunted by wild dogs quite often take to rivers to escape. Wild dogs, however, are good swimmers:
 

*This image is copyright of its original author

p4 - Jungle life

" ... It is emphatically true, as Champion has pointed out, that one is infinitely safer walking in the Terai jungles than in the streets of London. There are dangers, very considerable dangers, but not the sort the average stranger recognises, and against which arms and munitions are useless; for example, wild bees and the anopheles mosquito and unboiled drinking water. These are the dangers the experienced jungle-dweller worries about, not the carnivora, pachyderms and snakes ... " (pp. 20). 

p5 - Rhinos

" ... An extraordinary feature of rhinos is their behaviour towards a padah tied up as a bait for a tiger. A male musth rhino will attack it and kill it; a female rhino, on the other hand, shows a strong protective reaction, and will stay by or near the little padah. Should a tiger make his appearance during the night, she scares him away and will not allow him to make a kill ... " (pp. 28-29).  
  

q - Tigers and bears in a 'Ring'

The 'rings' described in the previous chapter sometimes had a circumference of half a mile. When the elephants closed the ring, the hunters not seldom found animals of different species close together. Tigers and Himalayan black bears have been found in the same ring more than once and a few disputes were witnessed and described.

q1 - Chitawan (Jhawani camp, February 24, 1938)

" ... When making a ring round a kill about a mile from camp, it was noticed that a tiger and a big black Himalayan black bear were enclosed, and a messenger carried the news back to camp. Soon after the beating elephants started their operations, an appalling uproar started in the undergrowth in the middle of the ring; the fierce growling of the tiger mingled with what the diary calls 'khwak khwak' noises of the bear, and it was evident a furious fight was on! To quote the eye-witness account of the diary:

'After several minutes the tiger was seen running away towards the howdah elephant, closely accompanied by two bears which pursued the tiger with their hands striking at its hips, singing their 'khwak khwak' noise, and exhibiting a kind of circus'.

As the running fight between the tiger and the 2 bears went blindly forward, they approached His Highness's howdah, and His Highness fired at and killed the bigger bear, which fell dead. But the surviving antagonists appeared too occupied or excited to notice this, and went on quarrelling and fighting in the same manner as if nothing had occurred, and disappeared again in the heavy undergrowth of the ring. Presently they appeared to separate, and the hullabaloo died down in silence. When the beater elephants went in again, first the bear came out and then the tigress and were shot by General Hari and His Highness respectively. They measured 5 feet 6 inches and 9 feet 1 inch. The diary adds:

'This sort of interesting and spectaculair fight between a tiger and bears was never witnessed by any one in this shikar before, so the joy of the whole party knew no bounds' ... "  (pp. 115-116).

q2 - Morang (close to Biratnagar, January 15 and 16, 1938)

" ... January 15 provided a record in that His Highness on the same day shot a tiger, a leopard and a bear! Never before or since has this 'treble' been achieved in Nepal. The tiger and the bear were shot in the same ring, and it is a notable fact that on this shoot this unusual and rare combination happened three times. On the very next day enormous confusion was caused in a ring containing one large tiger and two large bears. One of the latter, when wounded, broke through the ring, tearing down the white cloth, and Colonel Kiran immediately left the ring with 8 elephants and successfully finished him off after an exciting chase. The bear measured 6 feet 6 inches. Meanwhile His Highness was busy with the tiger and the remaining bear. The former attacked an elephant belonging to the Raja of Bainali, 'leapt on his hips, and remained clinging there for about 20 yards even while the elephant was running swiftly'. The total bag for this day was two tigers and two bears ... " (pp. 157).

q3 - Morang (same location as above, about a week later, 1938)

" ... A few days later a ring was formed round a kill under the most appalling conditions imaginable. It was round a patch of soggy ground where the Terai springs ooze out. The growth of vegetation in such areas in Eastern Nepal must be seen to be believed. Groups of tall dark trees of jamun and bischofia and other water-loving species, locked together by giant creepers, project above dark impenetrable evergreen shrubs, with occasional gaps of dense swamp grasses; a clump or two of thorny cane added to the horrors of the place, and - worst of all - there were patches of the fatal fasan (quicksands) in which the ponderous weight of elephants cause them to become hopelessy bogged. In this nightmare for shikar operations 2 tigers and (once again) a bear were enclosed.

The bear first broke cover and, when fired at, retreated again into the impenetrable undergrowth. Then a tiger charged the tusker Jaya Prasad, and started mauling his rump. The elephant became hopelessy stuck in the quicksand, while the tiger was biting and clawing his back, and

'this made the elephant to cry out in agony. The mahout had a hair-breadth escape, and only saved himself by jumping down from the elephant and running for his life. The tiger then jumped to the ground and made for the bushes, in an area of lowland, covered by swamps and bogs, where beating by elephants was almost impossible. The tiger, nevertheless, was forced out on to the eastern side, and charged Moti Prasad, the Banaili elephant, clinging to his tusk, when the elephant boldly threw him towards heaven, and the tiger took cover again'.

For two solid hours (4 p.m. tot 6 p.m.) everything possible was done to get the tigers and the bear out of their retreat but without success; during this period the noises of a fight between the bear and a tiger were clearly heard. Even the letting off of squibs and crackers had no effect. Finally in the gloom of the forest, when complete and utter darkness had set in, His Highness called the shoot off, and all returned to camp by the light of torches. The white cloth screen was however left, on the off-chance that it might retain the tigers or the bear.

Early next morning General Bahadur went off to examine the spot, and by studying tracks, it appeared that the bear had cleared out during the night, but the tigers were still in the area. Accordingly the elephants again made the ring around the cloth screen, and news was sent to His Highness, who reached the spot at 11-50:

'The beating started again with the same zeal as yesterday, if not more so. The elephants threw broken branches with their trunks where the tiger were concealed, uprooted and pushed down trees towards them, pistols and revolvers were fired, and even fires were lit to provoke the hiding tigers to break cover. After all this, the attempt was at last successful, and a tigress, magnificant for her size and colour, came into view of His Highness, who chose an opportune moment and fired two shots. She fell stone dead with shots through the chest and backbone; to the great satisfaction of His Highness, she measured 9 feet 8 inches, equal to the record for a tigress in Nepal. One thing peculiar was noted on the body of the tigress; there was a fresh wound on her back the size and shape of a human hand, which was explained by the fight with the bear that had been heard overnight' ... " (pp. 159-160). 


This, to finish the post, is a scan from 'Man-eaters and Memories' (J.E. Carrington Turner, 1959 - I have the reprint of Natraj Publishers from 2007). Carrington Turner (Indian Forest Service) worked in northern India for more than thirty years and saw bears (sloth bears and Himalayan black bears) quite often. Some Himalayan black bears reached a great size and weight:

*This image is copyright of its original author

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