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By 1992, the trade industry paid a total of 12.4 million dollars for 200 tigers that were harvested by poachers. In 1986, it was discovered that tigers were declining rapidly due to being poisoned, snared or shot and then smuggled out of India to supply medicinal manufacturers in China. In some places such as China, tigers were also perceived to be a threat to human life in the area, so those who managed to kill them were hailed as heroes to the general public. Accounts of British royalty photographed aside dead tiger carcasses during the late 19th and early 20th centuries depict the construction of the successful conquest of Indian nature, thus symbolizing the imperial, masculine identities desired by the British. Any of these involved considerable danger and the hunting of a tiger had been considered a manly and a courageous feat with game, trophies being collected as the symbols of valor and prestige. Historically, tigers have been hunted on foot, horseback, elephant-back, and from machans. Tigers were once considered to be harder to hunt than lions, due to their habit of living alone in dense cover and not noisily asserting their presence with roars as often. Now a conservation-reliant endangered species, the majority of the world's tigers live in captivity. Extensive poaching has continued even after such hunting became illegal and legal protection was provided to the tiger. The tiger has historically been a popular big game animal and has been hunted for prestige as well as for taking trophies. It has been hunted in these countries for centuries. The Bengal tiger is the most common subspecies of tiger, constituting approximately 80% of the entire tiger population, and is found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, and India. Humans are the tigers' most significant predator, and illegal poaching is a major threat to the tigers. Tiger hunting is the capture and killing of tigers. These statistics show just how desperate the tigers' situation has become.Tiger hunting by George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, and his wife Mary in British India, 1903. There are no sub-populations that compose of more than 250. There are some estimates that say that there are fewer than 2,500 adult breeding tigers in the wild. Alarmingly, the population has rapidly decreased to somewhere between 3,500 and 1,500 wild tigers. There is also the fact that traditional Chinese medicine makes use of tiger parts. In the beginning of the 20th century, there were more than 100,000 tigers all over the world. Habitat destruction and poaching for tiger fur are the main causes of the decrease of wild tiger populations. Predators killing off tigers is not even the main cause. What we know well is that tigers, whatever the subspecies may be, are all endangered. Conserving TigersĪs we have read, tigers hunt and are also being hunted by other predators. However, adult Bengal tigers usually hunt for sloth bears. Sloth bears, meanwhile, are aggressive and are fierce enough to shoo away young tigers from their kills. Of course, the tigers will also defend their prey. There have been bears that have left their hibernation to attempt to steal away the tigers' kills. A tiger living in the Russian Far East actually includes Asiatic black bears as well as brown bears into 5 to 8 percent of its diet.īrown bears have also been recorded to have killed tigers when defending themselves or avenging or disputing over kills. Still, there are cases of tigers killing bear cubs, as well as adult bears. Usually though, both sides would try to avoid a confrontation. There is even a case of a jackal finding itself among three tigers for the sake of following their trail of food.Īs for competition between species, Siberian tigers and brown bears can clash because of food. A golden jackal without a pack, for example, will trail a tiger for food. Meanwhile, solitary creatures manage to co-exist with tigers. This fight, however, finds both sides suffering a lot of losses. They do attack and even kill tigers when the two species clash because of food.
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Packs of wolves do not just go without a fight. Tigers even go against wolf populations in places where the two species somehow co-exist. Usually though, leopards and tigers are able to co-exist in peace when there is enough prey to go around. In the case of leopards, they try to hunt at different times from tigers to avoid competition. There are cases, however, where mugger crocodiles end up killing the tigers. Usually, the crocodile ends up being disabled while the tiger is able to escape. This scenario is made possible when thirsty tigers go for a drink by the rivers, where mugger crocodiles live. Eighteenth century doctor Oliver Goldsmith has talked about how tigers and crocodiles sometimes fight. When fighting a crocodile, they go for the eyes using their paws. Tigers hunt for prey, which even include fearsome predators such as crocodiles, leopards and pythons.