Tiger Predation

[Apollo]

When it comes to sloth bears and tigers.

If an adult tiger wants to kill a sloth bear, there will be a dead bear.
Sloth bears are no match for adult tigers, simply put tigers are too powerful.

But said that, tigers don't regularly hunt sloth bears. There is a peaceful co-existence between the two.
Its easier for tigers to hunt its regular prey than going for sloth bears, since there are chances for injuries, may be they don't taste that good and they do put up a good bluff when threatened.
There are several videos showing young and subadult tigers play fighting or being curious around sloth bears and then just simply running off.
There are videos of adult tigers trying fight or maul (not going for the kill) a sloth bear but then running off.


Here is an old video from Kanha NP, I forgot the name of the tiger but he killed the dominant male tiger of that territory a few days before this incident and wanted to assert is dominance over the territory.
The female sloth bear with her cub encountered the male tiger. She stood the ground (mama bear with her cub is the most aggressive bear) but the tiger killed her.
Later this male tiger developed a taste for sloth bear and hunted some.

Ranthambore zone 3, T120 feeding on sloth bear kill. Seems like an adult bear.

Here is Matkasur fighting with female bear with her subadult.
We can clearly see that Matkasur pinned the bear several times and if he had wanted to go for the kill, he could have killed her but he didn't.
Later when the tiger was tired, he ran off to the waterhole.
Kudos to mama bear for standing the ground and fighting.

Ill post more tiger and sloth bear interaction videos on my next post. Reply