Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Damdama female aka Hami

One of my friend asked me about Hami's previous litter. Hami lives in Khitauli zone of Bandhavgarh National Park. I think it's better to put it here for everyone's information. In her last litter she had two male cubs. Those two male cubs left her in monsoon 2012 and moved away from her territory. One sub adult cub moved towards Barhi Katni and found dead, electrocuted in a poachers trap, in Feb 2013 in Katni Division about 50 KM away in crow flight from the place where he was born. Other cub is not seen or photographed till date so no news about the area he moved away. Although he is not seen in any other tourist zone. So last litter left her in monsoon 2012 and she got pregnant in Sept Oct 2013. Cubs are born in Dec some time as they are about 3 months old now. 
So now the question is - what made her to conceive so late?
What was the problem? 
We are not a scientists and don't posses that kind of back ground educational knowledge what ever we write is through our observation. I did B.Sc with Mathematics and then a Degree in Hotel management. 
I would like experts and scientists and general readers to put there views here on the blog to discuss this issue.
Do you know none of the scientific material on Tigers discuss this topic in detail.  

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for this post, Satyendra. I'm no expert, as you know, and am only speculating as a reader...could it be that she didn't come into heat earlier because there was no stable male in the zone? Another, more morbid, possibility is that maybe she did have cubs from a male and they were killed by another male before we could get to know of their existence? It'd be interesting to know from the scientists and other experts what the average gap between litters is for tigresses in the wild from empirical studies.

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  2. Thanks Santosh, None of the scientists stay that long in the field so none covers this subject. Maximum they stay for three years and after the degree they all wants to cool off in a/c rooms. Other thing on which we wrote a paper in semi scientific journal was what age a male changes its hormones. If you go through the male Tiger situation in that area you may find the answer. Like homo sapiens these female do also like a stable partner. Otherwise they dont conceive.

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