Man Eating Tigers of India

The tiger is an imposing animal. It does not have the regal look of the Lion with its mane, but with its size and stripes it stands out among all the jungle cats. The natural habitat of the Tiger is India. But as the daily advertisement sponsored by save the tiger project show only about 1500 tigers seem to be left in India.

This dwindling of the tiger population is mainly due to the indiscrimate destruction of its natural habitat and the beast that is part of Indian folklore may face extinction. But again with pressure building up on the tiger with the destruction of its habitat the available game for the tigers is also reduced. Hence the tiger may turn to become a man eater. This is more by force of compuslsion as the natural prey may not be available. Sometimes the tiger becomes incapacitated because of injury and thus unable to hunt its prey of wild hog, deer and buck. In such cases the tiger will prey on human flesh.

In India legends abound about the cunningness of the tiger. There is no doubt that the tiger is a very intelligent animal and once he has turned man eater his senses are sharpened .He will usually attack lonely human beings and villagers who sometimes may go into the woods for the call of nature or otherwise. Sometimes he will be audacious and even enter a village and spirit away a child or a woman from the hut itself. There is a case of a tiger even carrying away a baby from the arms of a woman.

However tigers as man eaters are an aberration and in most cases they do not prefer human contact.Tigers do not kill humans from child hood and the tigress does teach the cubs to hunt prey but not humans.

But once a tiger for any reason either for lack of his prey or his infirmities becomes a man eater he is a formidable adversary. As a tiger weighs nearly 500 lbs he will usually over power the man with ease. There are cases of tigers stalking humans for long periods and then spiriting one of them in a stealthy manner. This shows that tigers are cunning animals. However man eaters who have been shot dead have revealed that they had some infirmaries

In India killing a tiger is banned and shooting one can well land you behind bars for some time. But in some cases when a tiger is identified as a man eater then orders may be passed to shoot him dead. Registered Shikaris are then invited to hunt the tiger. This can be a deadly game as the tiger is a formidable adversary.

Man eating tigers still abound in the jungles of India and it is not uncommon to read in the news paper that a tiger has carried away a human being from a village. The tigers can be identified by their pug marks and expert tiger trackers will do the trick. A man eating tiger could hole himself in a dark cave or a thick forest and approaching such a beast needs skill of the highest order.

The most dangerous of the Indian tigers is the Bengal tiger whose natural habitat is the Sunderbans. This is a delta area of the river Ganges and full of mangroves and water with thick vegetation. These tigers are also amphibious and sometimes the man eaters spirit away the villagers who have gone to collect honey from the boat itself .