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

[Wolverine]

@Spalea , since we have a friendly conversation about behavior of  the two cats, that's what I think. Tiger is not "smarter" than lion in human sence, he is just more concentrated hunter, he has just a higher ability to concentrate on particular subject, in this case on one single particular prey, while lions are more easily dispersed and change their attention easily from one to other subject. Lets imagine a classroom with many students, one of the students always listen what the teacher is saying, while other student is more dispersed and often check his cell phone, chat with his friends. Does the first student is "smarter" than the second one? No, he is just more concentrated. If tiger decides to kill a particular big animal, for example a gaur, he will finally kill it, he will hunt the gaur for many days. He will withdraw for hours to drink a water, to smell a signs for females or intruders, but he always keep in "mind" that he is hunting that particular animal. Even if the tiger during this period of time sees many other prey animals like deer he probably will not turn his attention to them. Lions from other hand if they have opportunity will turn their attention to other prey animals. Lion hunts, tiger hunts down. This probably is a tiger's evolutionary adaption for living in habitat with dense vegetation, where the herbivores often hide and disappear among the trees, so the tigers have evolved a capability to "project" in their brain the hunted animal even the hunted animal is not in the front of their eyes. Lion inhabit open habitats where all animals are in the front of their eyes, so evolution didn't require from lions to develop such a ability to project the herbivore in brain for long period of time.

Completely agree with you that both cats are not even close in their intelligence to some other really inteligent species like canids, bears, dolphins, elephants and of course apes. If the civilization didnt evolved from apes it would probably evolved from bears or maybe dogs... Could you compare a domestic dog which is almost half-human with a domestic cat who is simply "stupid". We love tigers and lions not because they are smart but because they are powerful, majestic, royal, charismatic etc. Reply