Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Vijya's first litter female cub killed by a male Tiger.

People are making so much hue and cry on such a small issue in Tiger's life. It always happens there. Whenever a dominant male is defeated and a new male takes over he just wants to show his supremacy through power only. Looks like either people have very short memory or they just don't care to look back "what happened in the past". 
First question is why female cub is killed?
General saying is that male kills all the male cubs? Then why this happened? 
In a very similar circumstances both the cubs of Yoshila were killed in Sukhi Patiya area.
I have record of more than ten incidents where female cubs were killed by a male tiger. Most of the time food was involved in the killing and few times young cubs didn't knew how to behave to an aggressive male Tiger. 
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=601868056501948&set=a.352868394735250.81778.304974559524634&type=1&theater
We were hearing the news of Vijya mating with this new male but no one seen actual mating except by one Mahavat who said he saw it. 
If we go through the cubs age it looks like a perfect timing for this but we knows that animals always prefer to mate with a dominant male. If Vijya was mating with this male then mating should have been continued for minimum three days. They never spent any day together. Most of the time they were seen sitting apart and growling at each other, Mahavat's report. This kind of aggression from a new male is previously seen in Bandhavgarh.
For months people including Mahavat's reported two males in Vijya's this litter. Last fortnight only when two cubs were sitting on a rock Mahavat identified them as two males. Her big built created all the confusion. She was calm and bold. We saw her hunting down a spotted deer which she did not allowed others to share while she was eating. She was a dominant cub amongst her siblings. She was becoming more independent than others and probably that cost her life. 
This new male has come from Mahaman. Indranis second litter probably. In those days she was very secretive and due to the new route system there were hardly any sightings of these cubs. Those were the film days, so many people has not even marked dates on their slides, so for many this is very difficult to find the real ID of this male. 
This is the one major drawback of park rules through Supreme Court rulings now. Park authorities should allow tourism in most of the park area for a better park record on film. In Madhya Pradesh most of the parks do not have permanent record of their Tigers.
Lately I heard that some people are claiming that she is Killed by her mother? So far in last 35yrs in the Jungle and in Wildlife Tourism I have never seen any female cub being killed by their mother. Once the cubs reaches to 18 months or so mother start looking for mate. This is the time when she start kicking her cubs to keep them away from her. In other words she tries to convey the message to Get on with your life by yourselves. We have seen Bachchi and Pyari taking her cubs far away from their territory to dump them. With few attempts they succeed in getting rid of them.
This cub was killed by this new male. Forest department got him in camera trap returning to same spot sniffing the bush.  

    Vijya's female cub that got killed by a male Tiger.


1 comment:

Imtiaz said...

Loss of a life is sad. Thanks for sharing the info. Again, it shows that mahavats, guides, drivers have to start observing the tigers in detail. If they see a tiger in that particular area, they say thats the area's tiger.
As discussed earlier Forest dept, Guides, Drivers are still confused b/w Tulse and Akali.