Big cat and Bear tale

[LandSeaLion]

I can't post in the Edge of Extinction thread because it is invitation only, so I'm replying in this thread instead.

@Matias

Quote:    It certainly is fully confirmed that a large male brown bear was killed by a tiger!!!

A lot of information has indeed been laid out in that thread, and I do think it's a possibility, but I can't really say that I agree it has been fully confirmed. Let me explain.

@Apex Titan

Quote:    A bear poster from Carnivora also contacted Mikhail Krechmar (Bear specialist & hunting biologist) about this incident. Even Mikhail Krechmar accepts this case.

    Read the full discussion here:

    https://kiowa-mike.livejournal.com/75407...l#comments


    Both Sergey Kolchin (leading expert on tigers and bears in Russia) and Krechmar believe and accept this account to be confirmed.

    Krechmar also stated that the tiger confidently crushes even large black bears. Confirming what biologist Sergey Kolchin told me, that even large male black bears (weighing 200+kg and body length of 2 meters), also fall prey to tigers.

    Krechmar was also asked if it was a "very large bear" killed, and he said - "Yes, healthy."  So Krechmar agrees that the bear was 'very large' and 'healthy.'  Which also confirms all the information I posted about this incident.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Thanks for posting that link. I think it's much more useful to read the full conversation translated from Russian into English (using Google Translate and DeepL), rather than just the small snippet you've highlighted here. This conversation occurred between a poster with pseudonym "vip_everyday" and biologist/writer Mikhail Arsenievich Krechmar (pseudonym "kiowa_mike") in the personal comments of his blog.

Quote:    vip_everyday: Good evening, Mikhail Arsenievich! Can you comment on this information? Thank you!


    "The place of battle between two taiga giants, the Amur tiger and the brown bear, was discovered by inspectors during a raid on the protected area in the southern part of the Bolshekhetsirsky Nature Reserve in Khabarovsck Krai, says the press service of the FSBI "Priamur'e Reserve."

    Not having had time to lie down in hibernation, the clubfoot became prey to the striped master of the taiga," the report says.

    Morever, the bear was of impressive size - the width of his front paw callus is 18 cm.

    "Judging by the footprints, the fight here was a serious one. The animals fought for a long time, but the tiger won. Probably it was Odir, a male tiger that lives mostly in this area of the Reserve and visits tigress Zlata, whose favorite habitat is the northern part of our Reserve," the press service quotes Yury Kya, chief engineer on forest protection and forestry activities of the Bolshekhetsir Nature Reserve.

    According to him, the tiger was not injured. Such conclusions can be made due to absence of blood stains on its resting place, which was found next to the bear's half-eaten carcass.

    "The tiger will probably come back here later to continue his meal for a few more days," the chief engineer clarified."

    kiowa_mike: So. This is a pretty common story. They devour each other and devour each other. The tiger got lucky this time. It doesn't always happen that way.

    vip_everyday: I was referring to the size of the bear. It says that the palmar callus is 18cm wide. That's a very large bear, isn't it?

    kiowa_mike: Yes, a big one*. But the tiger, I suspect, is not small either.

    [*Google Translate gives "healthy" here, but DeepL gives "big." I think it's fair to say from context he was not talking about the condition of the bear, but rather that it was "a healthy size." Remember, he is only a second-hand source of information himself.]

    vip_everyday: About the tiger on Vkontakte video (the original news) the employee of the reserve says that the track is 10-11cm. That's what surprised me. The tiger is an average male (sometimes > 13cm), and the bear is clearly larger than average. On the trail. If a tiger crushed a female brown bear, I would not be surprised.

    kiowa_mike: Well, everyone usually overestimates the size of a tiger's footprints. Everybody loves big cats, and the bigger the cat, the more they love it. Vladimir Aramilev, who's been doing it all his life, told me that he hadn't seen a tiger's footprint bigger than 13cm de facto. I am not Vladimir, but I have* seen them too. I, too, am inclined to relegate footprints of 15cm to the realm of mythology.

    [*He probably made a typo here and meant to say "haven't"]

    vip_everyday: What are the biggest footprints you've ever seen? A tiger and a bear.

    kiowa_mike: Tiger - 13 (moreover, it is always easier to make a mistake with a tiger than with a bear - because of the substrate); bear - 19.5.

    vip_everyday: Oh, I see. So, 13cm for the tiger is a maximum. The largest tiger in Ivan Seredkin et al. ("Tigers of the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve," 2005) had a footprint of 12.5cm.

    The news story I started with says that tiger preys on Himalayan bears. "According to Yuri Kya, more often than not, they were one-year-old individuals, i.e., 'cubs.' The tiger confidently defeats Himalayan bears up to the age of three years." Seredkin and his co-authors write about adult female brown bears harvested by adult male tigers. And here all of a sudden - a bear with a palmar callus of 18cm, and, judging by the resting place, the tiger, which had killed him, got off easy, because the resting place was not bloody. I was surprised and decided to ask a specialist. What is wrong with them?

    kiowa_mike: Well, I trust Seredkin more than I trust myself. He is a very good specialist.

    And with the tiger against the bear - well, the opportunity arose, and the mattress* took it. Each case cannot be considred out of the context of details. The tiger also crushes big white-chested bears** with confidence.

    [*I am not sure why the word "mattress" is used here - I can only assume that this is either a typo and there was a similar word in Russian that meant something akin to "predator" or the like, or that it's Russian slang/idiom that neither of the two translators I used picked up on. Someone else here who actually speaks Russian could probably correct this.

    **Asiatic black bears/moon bears]

    vip_everyday: "The tiger also crushes big white-chested bears with confidence."

    I've seen it with large Himalayan bears, too. For example, in the same sources as in Seredkin's. As for the "white-chested" bear, I was just quoting the above-mentioned news.

    We do not know the details, of course. Until a good expert like Seredkin examines the place, we will not know? Thanks a lot for the answers!

    kiowa_mike: "Until a good expert" - and even then we won't know. He is not clairvoyant.

When I read this, honestly, I did not walk away with the same impression as you, Apex. Instead, I came away with these conclusions:

a) Krechmar doesn't actually have any first hand information about the event, only what had been given to him via the news report (just like the rest of us).

b) He believes that bears and tigers kill and devour each other, and that it just so happened that this time it was the tiger who was the fortunate victor. He seems to have an open mind about it, and doesn't seem to think one is dominant over the other.

c) He didn't actually say that it was a healthy bear, but simply repeated from the information that he was given (the paw size) that it was big.

d) Krechmar considers Seredkin (co-author of a paper on Amur tiger predation, which reported tigers preying on brown bears only up to the size of adult females) to be a more knowledgeable expert on tiger-bear predation activity than himself.

e) He comments that it's easy to misjudge the size of tiger paw prints made in snow. I'll say more about this later.

f) Finally, he points out that even a highly knowledgeable expert will not be able to know exactly what happened by examining the scene - the tracks give some ideas, but not a conclusive picture. People are not clairvoyant.

That's a far more nuanced picture than "a biologist confirmed that a huge, healthy bear was killed by a tiger."

I have similar remarks to make about this conversation:

Quote:    Q: Hello, sir. You are an expert on bears, and in Russia, I want to ask whether it is true that brown bears were killed and eaten by tigers. Thank you, sir.

    Sergey Kolchin: Hello. Yes, it's true. Why not? This is a common prey for adult male tiger. Bear was not so bigger.

    Q: Oh! Thank you for your reply! thank you! This bear has a front palm pad width of 18 cm. Is he an adult?

    Sergey Kolchin: I'm not sure that the size of the paw is determined correctly. 18 cm is a big male. but the bear didn't look like that.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

There you go!  Even a biologist has confirmed this account.


    Of course the killed bear won't "look like" a large male to Kolchin, because the tiger had already eaten a large portion of the bears carcass, and its hard to judge the size of a partially-eaten bear from a video filmed on a phone or pictures.

    But all 3 experienced forest rangers were able to determine that the tiger killed a large male brown bear of impressive size, with a palm callus width of 18 cm. This is undeniable.

From my perspective, Kolchin's observation that it was a small bear isn't a throw-away comment based on a mistaken belief that a half eaten bear was actually a small bear. It's conditional to his "confirmation" that the incident occurred in the first place. He was ready to believe that the incident happened because it only looked like a small bear, and such predation events are commonplace. He suspects that the 18cm measurement made by the trackers was actually a mistake.

Like Krechmar, he also doesn't appear to have first hand knowledge of the event beyond the link to the report that he was given. So, all in all, I can't take this as "biologist confirmation that a tiger killed a large bear" either.

The Amur Tiger Center (also only a second-hand source) made the same observation - that, contradicting the reports of the 18cm paw size, the bear was "not the biggest."

*This image is copyright of its original author

(Above is the Google Translate version, which includes the amusing translation "beetroot" instead of "brown bear" - it's a pretty funny mental picture, heh. DeepL offers this translation:

"An Amur tiger crushed/ran over a brown bear in the Bolshekhetsir Nature Reserve in Khabarovsk Krai.

Read more about the incident in the publication of the protected area.

We can add that tigers in general often kill bears. Brown bears less often, but Himalayan bears more often. In this case the brown bear was not the biggest, so the tiger was initially the favorite in this fight.")

Personally, I'm not convinced by the explanation that Kolchin and the Amur Tiger Center couldn't tell the difference between a half eaten large bear and a small bear. When I saw the video myself, I also didn't think the carcass looked like it belonged a large bear at all - if it was, then surely the shape would be quite different, right? But, how on earth do we reconcile that very valid observation with the report of an 18cm size paw, indicating a large bear? Something that wasn't clear to me at all from reading the information given in the thread, including the original news report: was the 18cm measurement taken directly from the bear's carcass, or from paw prints in the snow? It's a pretty important distinction to make, because as Krechmar pointed out, determining the size of paw prints made in snow is an uncertain process, owing to the softness of the substrate. More information can be found about that here:

Quote:    Central to tracking is knowing how large a footprint is. This is a simple question until you think about it. One animal moving on a progressively softer surface will leave progressively larger tracks. What is the size of the animal s track?

    Try this experiment. Place your hand on a hard surface, a table for instance. Feel the contact area of your hand with that surface. Imagine that contact area as your first contact with a mud surface. As your hand goes deeper into the mud, your hand print enlarges. Your hand can create an infinite number of track sizes, the deeper it goes into the mud.

    Mountain lion and grizzly bear researchers jointly recognized the problem of variable track size and tried to develop means of over coming it. During their lion research, Fjelline and Mansfield (1989) developed a method for measuring tracks, we call the minimum outline method.

    Remember the first contact area of your hand with the surface. If your hand went no deeper into that surface, your hand print would have only one size - the MINIMUM OUTLINE. If your hand sank deeper into the surface it would create a series of variable outlines as the mud flowed around the curved surface of your hand and fingers. All footprints have a minimum outline, but only prints that sink into a surface have variable outlines. Therefore, minimum outlines are the only constant and consistent size in tracking.

    To measure the minimum outline, study the bottom of a print to determine where the rounded pad turns upward (see Footprint Cross-section figure). The break point where the pad turns upward would be the minimum outline edge. Use this edge to measure tracks.

*This image is copyright of its original author

    While the variable outline of a footprint may only be several millimeters wider than the minimum outline, those few millimeters have a large visual effect (see Area Exaggeration figure). The human eye sees area and area increases with the square of a linear measurement. In short, a few millimeters of width adds a lot of area to a footprint.

*This image is copyright of its original author

    Minimum outline size does not change for different surfaces (assuming you have a clear track) and therefore provides cross-surface comparison, for example from snow to sand. While an animal may leave may sizes of footprints depending on surface, slope and speed, there is only one minimum outline for every print.


    Assigning the break point is a subjective judgement and no two people will always mark it at exactly the same point. However, experimentation has shown that an individual tracker can reduce personal variation in measurements and that groups of trackers trained in minimum outline methods will become more consistent in their measurement of tracks. Quality measurements are the trackers goal and using minimum outline methods greatly reduces over-exaggeration and variability of track size.


    Whenever someone tells you they have measured an especially large track, determine if they understand the effect of sinking into a surface. Be very cautious of any measurements where the measurer does not specify that an effort has been made to control for the foot sinking into the surface.


    To report the track size for an individual animal, it is best to measure several different tracks and average them. A good report would also include a measure of variation (e.g. standard deviation). To do a good job of describing track size for a species, minimum outline measurements of several individuals should be averaged and variation measurements reported for both individuals and the species.


    For your personal research and learning effort, develop a minimum outline set of measurements for species that you can easily access. Remember to measure different ages, and sexes. Even doing this for common pets, cats and dogs, would be worthwhile. I am not aware of any such data sets for household pets. Be the first on your block and send a copy to TRAcks. Also, once you have several measurements of different age animals, you can
    develop growth curves for footprint size.

    A parting thought, be careful of any data set that lists only one measurement for a species. If it is an average, how many tracks and animals were averaged? What were their ages? What were their sexes? What was the variation in the data set? A range of measurements would be better, but the same questions still apply. Trackers must do quality work now days! You can help by developing good data sets and quality data sets take time to develop.

    REFERENCE: Fjelline, D.P. and T.M. Mansfield. 1989. Method to standardize the procedure
    for measuring mountain lion tracks. In Smith, R.H. (Ed.). Proceeding of the third mountain
    lion workshop. 1988, Dec.6-8. Prescott, AZ. Arizona Game and Fish Department.

    REPRINTED FROM:TRAcks, 2(1):3, the journal of the Tracker s Research
    Association, http://www.tracknature.com, (406) 848-9458 PO Box 989, Gardiner, MT 59030.
    By Jim Halfpenny, Ph.D.

https://www.tracknature.com/x/fun3.html

(We actually do see the trackers measure the tiger's paw print, by the way...from what I saw, they don't seem to have made any attempt to find the minimum outline.

Furthermore, I also wonder: if they did measure a paw print, is it not possible that it could even have belonged to a different bear? The bear carcass is covered with a thick layer of snow, which makes me think that some time may have fallen since its death. However, those paw prints around it look quite new, not covered by snow at all - could they have possibly been made by the tiger scrapping with an even bigger bear that was trying to scavenge the carcass's remains at some point later? Counterpoint against this line of reasoning though: if it did belong to another bear which survived, then we'd expect to see bear tracks leading away from the site of the conflict. There was no mention of this, and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be easily overlooked.)

Some more information can be found elsewhere on the Internet though, as GreenGrolar has already alluded to above. I was prompted to go looking because honestly, it has struck me that for a very long time, the Edge of Extinction thread has not really been a neutral source of interesting information about tigers, but the platform for one side of an extremely extended "tiger vs bear" debate waged between two warring factions, with the other side being platformed on a bear-focused board which keeps being addressed, but only rarely named ("Domain of the Bears"). Peter's posts have also mentioned that much animosity towards the Edge of Extinction thread has been coming from members of that board.

Well, I'm a curious cat, so I searched out this board so that I could see the other side of the story, so to speak, and lurked on it without participating. While there was indeed a ridiculous amount of bias towards bears and an extremely distasteful focus on "animal vs animal" fights there (of the kind that you would see in Carnivora), there was also some pretty important information in one recent post that I think is actually highly relevant. The first is this observation of a big bear paw print in the snow (which the trackers unfortunately appear to have stomped on):

*This image is copyright of its original author

This makes me think that it is entirely possible that the trackers didn't actually directly measure the bear's paw (which may have been consumed by the tiger), but measured instead the paw print in the snow.

The second, and more important piece of information though is this email, which was apparently received from Mikhail Milezhik, Head of the Protection Department of the Bolshekhtsirsky Reserve where the incident took place. GreenGrolar has already posted this.

Quote:

*This image is copyright of its original author

    Q：Здравствуйте, я недавно слышал, что в заповеднике была битва тигра с медведем У вас есть больше информации об этом медведе?

    Reserve：Здравствуйте!Медведя звали Миша, кличка «Косолапый», возраст примерно 3 года Подвид бурый. В ходе сражения тигр не пострадал. Начальник отдела охраны Милежик М.П.
    С Уважением,
    филиал Большехехцирский ФГ БУ"Заповедное Приамурье'

    DeepL translation:

    "Hello! The bear's name was Misha, nicknamed "Kosolapy", about 3 years old. The subspecies is brown. The tiger was not harmed in the battle. M.P. Milezhik, head of the patrol."

    Sincerely,
    Bolshekhetsirsky Branch of FSBI
    "Priamur'e Reserved (4212) 491869 - accounting department
    (4212) 491872 - General Department

This looks like a pretty confident and definitive statement from someone who would presumably be intimately familiar with the status of animal populations and territories in the reserve - such information may have been gleaned from the bear's remains (ie. skull and teeth). It is, however, also entirely inconsistent with any claim that it was a huge bear - a three year old bear is a juvenile or subadult, nowhere near close to being fully grown. Brown bears do not reach their full size until they are 10-11 years old.

However Apex, you've also shown evidence that Milezhik replied to another user, "goodhope683", to say that the information about the bear having 18cm-sized paws is valid:

Quote:   Anyways, a Chinese poster 'goodhope683' received an email from the reserve. The person who replied to the email was Mikhail Milezhik (head of the security department of the Bolshekhekhtsirsky reserve of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Reserved Amur Region"）

    Mikhail Milezhik confirmed that the killed male brown bear was indeed an adult brown bear with a palm callus width of 18 cm.

    Q：Я видел в вашем заповеднике новость о том, что северо - восточный тигр убил взрослого бурого медведя, в которой говорилось, что у него ширина ладони 18 сантиметров. Это правда? Спасибо, желаю вам всего наилучшего!

    This report was sent to him:

    http://www.zapovedamur.ru/news/kse

    Mikhail Milezhik：Здравствуйте, да информация действительна


    English translation:

    Q: I saw a news report in your reserve about a northeast tiger killing an adult brown bear, which said that it had a palm width of 18 centimeters. This is true? Thank you, wish you all the best!

    Mikhail Milezhik: Hello, yes the information is valid.

*This image is copyright of its original author

So. How can this be? Which is correct? Was one (or both) of these emails fabricated?

If both are actually real, then the only ways that I can think of to reconcile them would be these:

- The bear was a three year old juvenile
- The tracks belonged to the juvenile, but were incorrectly measured by the trackers due to the softness of the substrate (snow)

Or:

- The bear was a three year old juvenile
- The tracks were correctly measured but belonged to a different, larger bear, which the trackers failed to pick up on

Or:

- The bear was not a juvenile, Milezhik is misinformed and can't be taken as a credible expert in this particular case (morever, both Kolchin and the Amur Tiger Center made wrong observations)
- The paw size was directly and correctly measured by the trackers, and indeed belonged to the very large bear

All three of these scenarios require some degree of human error, which honestly isn't that far fetched - even the best experts do get things wrong sometimes. No one is infallible. And yes, that includes the trackers.

It's a real shame that you left the second email from Milezhik out of the Edge of Extinction thread though, as it is obvious that you are actively reading the board where it was posted, even if only to formulate rebuttals - I noticed that your last post in the Edge of Extinction thread actually responded to the "Domain of the Bears" post that contained that email, but only to the bit about the bear being referred to in the comment section of the video as "Misha" (apparently a common generic nickname for bears in Russia). Not the actually relevant and contradictory information, which was the "Misha" in question potentially being only three years old.

Quote:I assume that email was faked by a bear fan. Mikhail Milezhik confirmed that the killed male brown bear was an adult bear with a palm callus width of 18 cm. So how can the bear possibly be a 3 year old? Makes no sense, whatsoever.

...instead, you've chosen to dismiss it outright as a fabrication. Hey, this could very well be the case - it's a screenshot posted on a message board after all, not an email attachment, and people can and do tell lies on the Internet. I haven't contacted Milezhik myself to verify - I don't even have his contact email. But for heaven's sake, if you truly want to be a neutral source of information Apex, then don't just include the one screenshot of an email from Milezhik (the one to goodhope683) as evidence to support the case that you clearly want to make while neglecting the one that doesn't support your argument, without at least explaining why you've done this. If one is fake, then that raises the possibility of the other one being fake too.

Just to reiterate - I don't actually think it's out of the realm of possibility that the tiger successfully preyed upon a large male bear. I'm keeping an open mind about it, not dismissing it. But by declaring, by fiat, that the original story is absolutely infallible and that the bear having an 18cm sized paw is "god's truth", you're doing the opposite of keeping an open mind - you're automatically dismissing any additional information that contradicts this picture, without further thought. This assumption also heavily slanted the way you interpreted each of the biologists whose commentary you have included - including Kolchin, who quite explicitly said that he believes that the paw size may have been measured incorrectly. 

Whether you intended it or not, this annoyingly selective editing and filtering of information, with the end result showing one side of a story that is not at all clear, was what finally triggered me to write down this massive compilation of my thoughts and doubts about the whole thing. The Edge of Extinction thread is ostensibly meant to be a place where good, neutral information about tiger behaviour and biology is posted, unbiased by subjective opinion...but I don't think it has achieved that goal, for all the reasons I've posted (sorry Peter).

I will say though, that I did like these comments you made later:

Quote:    But then there are rare cases of tigers getting injured in fights by smaller sloth bears. Why is this? How comes in some cases sloth bears can manage to injure a tiger in a serious fight, whereas the much larger brown bears and large male Asiatic black bears fail to do so in some cases?? 

    What this shows, is that every fight is different. Maybe Odyr is a highly adept bear-killer who was able to avoid any serious injuries in the fight. Or maybe, he did get slightly injured from the fight, but not bad enough for him to leave clear traces of his blood on the ground. Maybe his injuries were minor? Who knows.

Quote:There are also cases of tigers killing 'large' and 'very large' male (Ussuri) wild boars in prolonged fights without sustaining any injuries whatsoever. But then there are rare cases of other tigers getting injured in fights with large male wild boars, and even in extremely rare cases, even killed. So again, it depends.

    Even the first-hand reports from the "Reserved Amur region" only noted how the killed bear was of "impressive size" and had a palm callus width of 18 cm. But no mention/assumptions of the bear possibly being already weakened or sick etc, prior to his death by the tiger.

Here, you are being open-minded enough to acknowledge that there could at least be another perspective to the story. That was something that had been sorely missing, up until that point.

Final note, and a bit of a rant (with my own very opinionated voice):

I don't think any biologist worth their salt actually cares overly much about the question "who would win in a fight, a tiger or a bear?" beyond the science of tiger predation/tiger and bear conservation. There's a thin line between the former (a pop culture "spectator sport" type of question, and a bloodthirsty one at that) and the latter, which actually has important ecological ramifications.

I also don't believe that language like "the tiger crushes the bear" belongs in any kind of reputable scientific conversation about predation and interspecific conflict.  Perhaps this is a language translation issue, but I'm genuinely surprised and more than a bit concerned to see this language ("run over"/"crushed"/"flattened") being repeatedly used not only here on Wildfact, but also by the Amur Tiger Center and by one of the biologists quoted (although in that last case, at least it was only in the comment section of his informal blog).

It is this kind of disrespect for animals, and the downright toxic and tribal nature of "my favourite animal beats your favourite animal" debates plaguing the Internet, that puts me off wanting to participate in a forum like Carnivora. I can't help but notice that several of the images that were posted in the Edge of Extinction thread are hosted on a group called "Animal Fight Club"...that's not exactly encouraging. Is Wildfact also an "animal vs animal" board, or is it a wildlife enthusiast board focused on scientific information? I joined because I thought it was the latter, but from my perspective, it also comes dangerously close to being the former...I can't help but feel that Wildfact's Edge of Extinction thread and the bear forum are each playing host to a selectively edited version of a story that supports a favourite animal, in a wholly unscientific debate based more on "spectator sport" entertainment than genuine respect for nature. It's disappointing.

End rant. Reply