BODY LANGUAGE AS A TOOL TO COMMUNICATE

[Amnon242]

"lowering the head and sticking to the ground is classical submissive behavior" - biased, non-biased...this is simply wrong. Felids are not dogs :-) Well, tigers position in 1:02 can be perhaps described as slighty submissive (in some sense), but in a friendly, peacefull way "cmnon...leave me alone, I dont want to fight, I just want to have a rest". But this is actually not what I call a submission, since the tiger is obviously not scared (as you confirmed), actually in 1:03 the tiger got somewhat pissed and the lion leaves the place...and the tiger follows him (like escorting repulsed rival out of the territory). And in other parts of the video we can see the tiger in positions I mentioned above "on alert, awaiting an attack" (by lowering the head and body)...and this is not submission at all.   

"the tiger is not looking to attack " - yes. The tiger is not looking to attack. But that does not mean that he is submissive. He is not aggressive. But he seems to be self - confident. 

"The lion in that video also has a problem with his hind legs" - nah, he is rather slipping on the mud...perhaps one leg is slightly injureded...but he seems to have basically no problem when he runs...anyway, the condition of lions hindlegs (or reasons why he lost that skirmish) is not the issue, the issue is interpretation of that situation/body language.  

"it fended off nicely in standing position against the tiger" - what i see is that the tiger easily repelled the lion by that hit in 0:17 (the only real hit made by both in that skirmish). In 0:16 we can see that the lion grazed the face of the tiger a bit. Then the tiger goes into 2 - point stance, blocks the attempts of the lion and then finishes the skirmish by real hit. Then the lion leaves the place and the tiger follows him. Crystal clear. 

Anyway, thank you for your replies and for sharing your point of view. Obviously I dont agree with some of your points, but I dont think anything negative about your opinion.   Reply