Felids Interactions - Intraspecific Conflicts

[GuateGojira]

(12-31-2019, 03:53 AM)Pckts Wrote: Also another example of Sensationalism is the claim that a Tigress could pull an adult Male Tiger and Sambar together, I'm sorry but we all know a Tigress isn't going to out pull a Male Tiger and a Sambar Carcass at the same time. 

It is not just a "claim", he saw it, here is the report in the page No. 45 of Thapar's book "Tigers The Secret Life":

"Confortable in the presence of jeeps, she grips the throat of the sambar for a couple of minutes, ensures that there is no life left in the deer and starts the tedious process of dragging the 180 kg cascass away, a few metres at a time, into thick cover. The Bakaula male watches her carefully. The carcass is now some fifteen metres insde the jamun grove at the edfe of a small clearing. The tiger moves toward it. So does Fateh. An amusing scene confronts him. The male tiger, whith his forepaws on the sambar's sump, has a firm grip on one of the hind legs. Laxmi has a firm grip on the throat. The carcass is stretched between the two tigers. A mock tug war ensues as each tries to pull the carcass a little towards them. Both tigers emit low-pitched growls, insterpersed with herculean tugs at the carcass. THen, with a sudden burst of energy and strength, Laxmi yanks the carcass some four metres away with the Bakaula male astride its rump: a remarkable feat, as sambar and tiger together must weight about 450 kg. But it exhausts her and she lets go of the throat. The male quickly pulls the carcass out of sight".

This the real report of Valmik Thapar, I don't see where is the "sensationalism" on this story. Is prety simple, the tigerss pulled the carcass and the tiger for about 4 meters and she exhausted, for obvious resons, and lost the carcass. He provided a figure of 450 kg, 180 kg for the sambar and 270 kg for the tiger, but these are just calculations and the weight of the sambar could be somewhat higher while the weight of the male tiger was certainly much lower. Interestingly Thapar estimated this tiger in page No. 50 at "over 200 kg", so the figure of 450 kg, which is still posible to be draged by a tigress sor a short time, was probably much lower, may be as low as 400 kg. Besides, the drag was probably just for less than a minute in a burst of energy, but after that the tigress give up at the moment. So, no "sensationalism", just a report of an event. Reply