Bengal Tigers in the Wild

Bengal Tiger, Portrait of Male Tiger, Madhya Pradesh, India Photographic Print
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Class: Mammalia

Order: Carnivora

Family: Felidae

Genus species: Panthera tigris

Sub species: Panthera tigris tigris

Size: Male tiger can grow up to 3 m (approx 10 ft.), female to 2.7 m (approx 9 ft.). These figures include the tail which is about 90cm (approx 3 ft) long.

Weight: Male can be up to 225 kg (approx 500 pounds), female to 135 kg (approx 300 pounds); and is the largest member of the cat family.

Life span: On an average Bengal tigers survive live to about15 years in the wild; 16 to 18 years in captivaty.

Description: The Bengal tiger's coat colour is orange with narrow black, gray or brown stripes. The underside is white or off-white. Eye colour is amber. There is a rare variation - the white tiger which has a white coat with darker stripes and blue eyes.

Six-Year-Old Bengal Tigress Rosi Photographic Print
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Female tigers can reproduce from the age of around three to four years while the male reaches sexual maturity at about four years of age. Although they may mate throughout the year, they usually do so between November and April.

Gestation takes around 103 days and the female has a litter of between two and five cubs which should weigh just over two pounds (approx one kilo). Like our pet cats, the cubs are born blind and totally depend on their mother. They suckle for around six to eight weeks but depend on their mothers to hunt food for them until they are about 18 months old. By this age, they should be hunting for themselves.

Even when they are able to hunt on their own, the cubs remain with their mother until they are two to three years old. At this age, they leave to find their own territories and live the solitary life of a wild Bengal tiger.

Bengal Tigers, Panthera Tigris, Endangered Species Photographic Print
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The numbers quoted for Bengal tigers now living in the wild are variable but it seems that most authorities say between 3000 and 5000. There is so much disagreement on these figures, though, that it's quite possible there could be as few as 2500 left.

Tigers need a large territory but, as can be seen from the map above, the tiger's habitat has shrunk dramatically since 1900. This is largely due to human activities taking over the tiger's traditional range. There is also a loss of habitat due to rises in sea level, particularly in the Ganges Delta, due to climate change. You can see more about this in the video below.

Tigers are solitary animals and they defend their territory aggressively. They scent mark it to warn rivals and they will fight to keep other tigers out.

They hunt at night and will travel miles to find their prey, usually deer, antelope, wild pigs and other medium to large sized mammals. If they can't find these, they will eat lizards, frogs, fish, birds or pretty much anything they can find.

Unlike many other cats, they don't climb trees but they are powerful swimmers and some include areas of river and swamps in their territory as shown in the video below. They are also fast and powerful runners.

Like other members of the cat family, tigers lie in wait, disguised by their stripes, and then pounce on their prey when it comes close enough. In fact, it uses similar tactics to our pet cats, just on a much larger scale.

The Revenge of the Hunted Devgarh, circa 1780 Giclee Print
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For most Bengal tigers, humans are not on the menu and avoid man wherever possible. The famous maneating tigers are usually sick or injured so can't hunt their traditional prey successfully. People are an easier target as they can't run so fast or effectively defend themselves.

Charles McDougal wrote a paper in 1987 called The Man-Eating Tiger in Geographical and Historic Perspective in which he says that in 1877 almost 800 were killed by tigers in British India (this included what we now call Pakistan and Bangladesh). From 1902 until 1910 an average of 850 people were killed each year. In 1922 this figure almost double to 1,603. During the later 20th century, the number of killings by tigers decreased considerably, probably due to the diminishing population of wild tigers.

" A standing person's head and neck are in the wrong place and most adult human beings are taller than many large prey species."
(McDougal and Seidensticker from Tiger predatory behaviour, ecology and conservation. 1993)

McDougal argues that it is a shortage of its normal prey that causes a tiger to attack humans. The other reason is usually a serious injury that prevents it hunting other animals.

One interesting point is that a tiger is unlikely to attack a person standing upright. In a later paper written by McDougal with John Seidensticker, it is suggested that a bipedal (two legged), upright stance does not conform with the tiger's internal model of a prey animal. This is why people bending in rice paddies or rubber plantation workers bending to cut into the lower parts of rubber trees are often victims of a maneating tiger. They produce a silhouette that is closer to the tiger's image of prey.

Create human-tiger friendly landscapes that:

• Offer core protected areas surrounded by buffer zones where tigers can raise their young, allow humans and tigers to co-exist;


• Provide corridors that will connect tigers to other protected core areas.


• Increase conservation investment.


• Improve conservation across international borders.

Essential goals for the next 10 years:

• Secure tiger populations in all global-priority tiger landscapes;


• Obtain reserve status for 10 places with unprotected breeding tiger populations;


• Establish at least five tiger habitat corridors between fragmented tiger conservation landscapes.

From Save the Tiger Fund

Picture above
Working with forest guards in India to build tiger monitoring capacity
Picture copyright © Envirosearch, available from the Save the Tiger Fund.

Bengal Tiger, Female Drinking, India Photographic Print
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When we think of tiger poaching, we probably think of tiger skins, maybe used for rugs or clothes. Tigers are killed for their skins as expected but there is also a trade in their body parts and bones for traditional Chinese medicine.

Leading traditional Chinese medicine practitioners agree that there is no need to use tiger parts in their products and that there are other substances that can be used instead without having a detrimental effect.

Female Indian Tiger at Samba Deer Kill,
Bandhavgarh National Park, India
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Set up in 1973 under the auspices of the Indian Government, the Project Tiger mandate is to conserve a viable population of Bengal tigers.

Initially it set up nine tiger reserves containing a total of 268 tigers. Today there are 27 reserves containing 1498 tigers, according to Project Tiger. The reserves are managed by designating a core area within each one. All activities that could disturb or be detrimental to tigers are kept out of this area. Around the core, there is a buffer zone in which certain activities are allowed like some logging, grazing and what Project Tiger describes as 'collection of minor forest produce'.

Sariska Tiger Reserve

" Despite all these problems, India still holds the best chance for saving the tiger in the wild....There are still areas with relatively large tiger populations and extensive tracts of protected habitat."
Wildlife Protection Society of India

There have been allegations that Project Tiger has inflated the numbers of tigers found in the reserves. In the light of what happened in the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, this is not surprising.

It was designated as a wildlife reserve in 1955 and then a tiger reserve in 1978. Historically, it has been an area rich in wildlife with tigers, leopards, jackals and many others. It was once a royal hunting reserve and is the site of several archeological sites from the 9th and 10th centuries.

In 2004, rumours started that there were no tigers left in Sariska. Not only were no tigers seen but no traces like spoor, pugmarks (paw prints) or other signs could be found either.

In January 2005 the news that all the tigers had disappeared from the reserve hit the Indian newspapers leading to an 'emergency census'. So seriously was this news taken that the Central Bureau of Investigation (India's intelligence agency) investigated. They confirmed the terrible news that all the tigers had gone and that they had probably all been poached.

Now a handful of tigers have been introduced to the Sariska and villages within the area are being relocated outside to give the tigers a better chance of surviving and establishing themselves there.

The Wildlife Protection Society of India says, "Prevailing conservation efforts are not geared towards, nor have they adequately addressed, the new threats with new protection strategies ie. better law enforcement, training and support."

This isn't just an Indian problem, though. If there was no demand for tiger skins and body parts, there would be no reason for poaching.

March 8, 2009 - Old Tiger Skins Could Help Combat Poachers
Families whose great grandparents or other ancestors went on tiger hunts in India or other countries could now help to save tigers from extinction by donating their trophies of tiger skins, skulls, bones, teeth and stuffed heads.

The Royal Museums of Scotland and Cardiff University are appealing for the trophies from years gone by, when tiger hunting was acceptable, so they can extract the DNA from them so they can build a genetic database. By linking the various trophies and their DNA to the regions where the tigers were killed, they can track where present day tiger remains have come from when seized from smugglers and poachers. With this information, they can find where most of the tiger poaching takes place and increase their efforts to combat the poachers there.

Read more about the research for a tiger DNA database.

February 23, 2009 - Fishing Practices Could Endanger the Tiger
There are reports from the Sunderbans (Ganges Delta region) that changes in traditional fishing practices are having a serious ecological impact on several species including the Bengal tiger.

The Sunderbans is a unique area of mangrove jungle and swamps; fishing has been the traditional way of life for a majority of people there. They have always used natural materials for their nets - until now, that is. They are changing to nylon nets with a much finer mesh than the old ones meaning they catch much smaller species of shellfish and fish as well as the young of larger species.

In addition to the change in the type of nets, now many unofficial dams are being built even on quite relatively small streams and rivers. The water in these is usually more salty than further inland because it is an estuary where fresh and salt water meet. The dams are stopping the free flow of fresh water and so increasing the salinity of water below the dams. This is endangering a number of species that can only tolerate a certain level of salinity.

One of the species in danger from this development is the Bengal tiger. The tigers in this region are the only cats that have developed a tolerance for drinking salty water. However, the higher levels of salinity below these dams is too much for the tigers.

As often is the case, tigers and other species are placed in danger where the activities of man impinge on their habitats. While traditional methods of fishing were followed, co-existence was possible but now many species in the Sunderbans are endangered.