தி TiGER

¤ Courtship Period

Males demarcate their territories by sprinkling urine on prominent trees on the periphery of their territories. They also scrape the tree by their nails and then sprinkle foul smelling secretion from their anal gland. Any intrusion in this territory is taken seriously and the offender is either shooed away or killed. Incidences of tiger killing and eating another tiger have been reported.

Female tigers also mark their territories but not as often and religiously as the males. The scent of their secretions smell even more when the female is in heat, delivering invitations to the males to mate.

Since the territories are distinctly marked and respected, there are hardly any confrontations between the males. But if such an event does take place, it is mostly serious. Knock-out fights are not uncommon and many tigers may die due to injuries inflicted during these supremacy bouts.

The courtship period is short ranging from a week to 10 or 12 days, with actual mating taking place for just two or three days. After the mating period is over, life is once again solitary for both the sexes. After a gestation period of 105 days, females gives birth to six, small, blind and helpless cubs. This marks the starting of another challenging period for the mother tiger.


¤ Identification

Tiger identification and counting its true number has been a challenge for the biologists. Though every tiger has its own unique pattern of stripes and facial features, its not practical to use this method because of its secretive behaviour and other field problems.

Alternative, but comparatively less reliable method of identifying individuals by their pugmarks is employed. Different features of tigers pug, that is size, shape, depth of right and left lobes, placing of toes to name a few varies form tiger to tiger. Using a combination of these features, individuals can be identified.

However, there is a lot of criticism about the pugmark method of identification and counting. Tigers leave different pugmarks on different kinds of strata. There is a strong feeling amongst activists that the actual number of tigers in the forest may be much less than what the forest officials claim.