A striped hide, sharp fangs and a ferocious growl - who is this? Even small children know the answer. Humanity loves to create around animals its own idea of them, often different from reality. So we got dangerous octopuses, stupid parrots, noble lions … But with the ferocious and mighty tigers, oddly enough, we did not miss.
JUNGLE DEMONS
The tiger is the default predator. One of the first images that comes to our minds when we try to imagine a dangerous beast. And this, in general, is a well-deserved glory. Tigers are the largest of all felines, some representatives of Bengal tigers reach a length of almost four meters, and weigh up to three hundred kilograms. Tigers are convinced loners, furiously guarding their territory from strangers, active mainly at night. They watch their prey in ambush or sneak up to it from the leeward side to kill it with one bite of their huge eight-centimeter fangs. Feel the power of a portrait? Not a beast, but a real demon of the night lurking in the darkness of the jungle. It is quite possible to understand both Sir Rudyard Kipling, who opposed Mowgli with the insidious and formidable Sher Khan, and Sir William Blake, who created the brightest,but a gloomy image in the poem "Tiger".
On the other hand, all of the above is not at all a reason to treat tigers with prejudice. Their method of hunting is most effective for forests and jungles, and does not stand out for any special "cunning" - most predators, including humans, prefer to catch their prey by surprise. In freedom, they do not tolerate competition on their territory, but in captivity, even adult males learn to find a common language with each other, without arranging deadly fights. By their nature, tigers are not much different from other big cats - they are playful, curious, quick-witted. Females are caring mothers who educate their offspring for a year and a half before releasing their children into independent life.
TIGERS OF NON-CONVENTIONAL EDUCATION
Like the other largest felines, tigers belong to the panther genus - along with leopards, jaguars and lions. But they stood out, separating from the common ancestral line 2 million years earlier than all the others. What did the ancient tigers look like? About the same as now. Even the sizes have remained the same, at least as regards the subspecies living on the mainland. Striped paint has helped camouflage tigers among trees and bushes millions of years ago. Seems like the bright orange hide with black stripes is easy to see? Only in motion does it merge into a single blurry spot, which does not allow the prey to correctly assess the contours of the predator's body and notice it nearby in time. This even applies to people whose eyesight is one of the best in the animal kingdom, and what can we say about all kinds of deer, roe deer and wild boars!Even Indian elephants and rhinos sometimes become victims of the largest felines - the overwhelming majority, of course, are young and inexperienced. Amur tigers have an eternal confrontation with brown bears living in the same territory. Both of them do not want to yield to the top of the food pyramid, and often kill each other, from which the already small tiger population suffers greatly.
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Not all tigers are as large as the Amur and Bengal tigers - the island subspecies are half as massive and differ in their way of life from their mainland counterparts. For example, Sumatran tigers, endemic to the island of Sumatra, almost never ambush, but skillfully sneak up and chase their prey for a long time, which is uncharacteristic for other felines, to put it mildly. There is a known case when a Sumatran tiger chased a buffalo for several days! Also, unlike other subspecies, the male Sumatran tigers do not leave the females immediately after mating, but only when the cubs become adolescents, and help in education.
TIGER PEOPLE
The attitude towards tigers in Eastern culture, as well as in the culture of the island peoples, is most easily compared with the perception of the Slavic tribes of brown bears. In ancient Korea, tiger hunting was a separate caste of hunters who never called a tiger by name. Throughout the Asian region, the tiger was respectfully called the "king of the forest", "the king of beasts", revered as a symbol of courage and military valor. In Malaysia, the aborigines believed that tigers live in a society similar to humans, building their own cities and villages, and the Siberian Nivkhs and Sumatrans even treated them like real people. In Bengal, after killing a tiger, the hunter was obliged to immediately make a prayer, explaining in detail to God the reason for such an act. He could count on forgiveness only if the tiger really attacked people.
In China, perhaps, the most controversy is associated with tigers. On the one hand, it is the personification of strength, health and fertility, which is still haunted by unfortunate predators, whose body parts are disassembled by poachers for medicines and aphrodisiacs. The tiger drives away diseases and evil spirits, fights irreconcilably with demons, helping great magicians and deities in this. In Taoism, the image of a tiger associated with autumn and white was contrasted with the green spring dragon - but not as "evil against good", but only as a beautiful combination of symbols. On the other hand, the Chinese Buddhists did not favor the tiger, considering it one of the three Insensible Beings, the embodiment of anger and anger (the other two are a greedy monkey and a lustful deer). In general, the popularity of the tiger outweighed the negative, otherwise the tiger would not have been included in the famous Chinese 12-year calendar. There he is associated with fire, courage, leadership and quick temper. Again, like the bear among the Slavs, the tiger is often a totem animal among many Indian tribes, and werewolf tigers are found in fairy tales.
DISAPPEARING APPEARANCE
It's not just Chinese poachers who make money hunting tigers - a similar trend has emerged in all of their habitats. Tigers are disappearing from the planet, and we cannot blame anyone but ourselves. It cannot be said that they did not provoke us - even now, when the number of tigers in the wild over the past century has decreased from 100 thousand to 4 thousand, some individuals continue to hunt people. In densely populated Asian regions, the number of victims of predators per century is estimated at tens of thousands. Humans occupy tiger territories, tigers attack livestock and herders, and this vicious circle has revolved throughout history. We are winning, of course. We are the dominant species, we are much smarter, stronger and more numerous, and the most formidable predators are rapidly disappearing under our onslaught. This is most noticeable on the islands - the Balinese and Javanese tigers no longer exist, exterminated in the early - mid-20th century, the Sumatran under a distinct threat of extinction.
There is no point in crying over the skin of a dead tiger - at least, it is unworthy of his proud spirit. As is the case with many other endangered species, humanity has already managed to grab its head and ban hunting everywhere. Thousands of individuals are preserved in reserves, zoos and private nurseries, so that even if they disappear from the wild, the species will continue to exist. Getting along with tigers is not easy, it's a fact, but the attempt is definitely worth it, no matter how burning fear they cause. We need the night masters of forests and jungles - at least as living embodiment of natural power and beauty.
Sergey Evtushenko