Felids Interactions - Interspecific Conflicts

[peter]

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Wild animals, and teenagers in particular, often are quite nosy. They like to meet their neighbours and also enjoy games. The tiger in the video, a youngster, was just saying hello and invited the bear to a game. The bear agreed and enjoyed it as well. In captive tigers and bears, I saw it as well. In most cases, bears initiated the game. They knew how to annoy their neighbour and ran every time he responded. 

Tigers, like bears, enjoy games. When I was young, the Amsterdam zoo they had a pair of Sumatran tigers. The male tiger often played with the cubs. I visited the zoo every week or so. Just before they closed and most visitors had left, I approached the cage of the tigers unseen. My aim was to surprise them. Every time I succeeded, the male tiger responded by roaring and rolling over. He liked the game very much. After some time, he knew what to expect and tried to turn the tables. When I approached the cage after my stalk, he came out roaring from his hide. After the game, he approached the bars for a chat. Even when I visited the zoo with friends in the afternoon, he came over to say hello. 

Many encounters between wild animals are misunderstood. People often think a tiger stalking a sloth bear has murder on his mind. Nine times out of ten, this is not the case. The tiger could be training his skills or, more likely, use the opportunity to scare or meet his neighbour. If the bear is an adult and the tiger a youngster, chances are it will teach the tiger a few things about manners. 

In northern India and Nepal, relations between tigers and bears seem to be different. I never read anything about young tigers and bears playing and a meeting between an adult tigress and an adult female Himalayan bear not seldom results in animosity. In most cases, the tigress is chased. Adult male Himalayan bears, larger than sloth bears, and adult male tigers seem to be competitors. If anything, they seem to avoid each other. The fight described by Jim Corbett was the exception to the general rule. In Vietnam, those who hunted tigers wrote some large male Himalayan black bears significantly outsized an average male Indochinese tiger. 

Male tigers in particular occasionally hunt sloth bears, but I only heard about one young male Himalayan black bear killed by a male tiger northern India about a decade ago. In the Russian Far East, things are quite different. Male Amur tigers in particular often hunt Himalayan black bears (including adult males) and some of them also hunt adult female brown bears and immature male brown bears up to 4-5 years of age. There's no love between Amur tigers and brown bears. Same in zoos. Reply