Royal Bengal Tiger
TAXONOMICAL CLASSIFICATION:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Felidae
Genus: Panthera
Species: P. tigris ( P. tigris tigris var.)
Origin and Range: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Bhutan and China.
Habitates:
Tigers live in a wide variety of habitats such as in tropical lowland evergreen forest, monsoonal forest, tall grass jungles and mangrove swamps. Tigers are able to cope with a broad range of climatic variation. In general, they requires only some vegetative cover, a source of water and sufficient prey
Behaviour:
Royal Bengal Tigers are solitary.
The only long term relationship is between a mother and her offspring.
They are most active at night when their wild ungulate preys are most active.
They prefer to hunt in dense vegetation and along routes where they can move quickly.
They have tremendous leaping ability being able to leap from 8 to 10 meters.
They are excellent swimmer, easily cross river as wide as 6 to 8 km.
They are excellent climber using their retractable claws & powerful legs.
Reproduction :
Breeding Interval
Breeding season
Range number of offspring
Range gestation period
Female tigers give birth every 3 to 4 years, depending on the length of dependence of previous cubs
Tigers can breed at any time of the year, but breeding is most common from November to April
1 to 7
96 to 111 days
Life Span:
Typical life span status :
Wild – 8 to 10 years
Captivity – 16 to 18 years
Average life span status :
Wild – 10 years
Captivity – 26 (highest) years
Food Habits :
Hunting procedure and eating habit :
Tigers locate their prey using hearing and sight more than olfaction.
They use stealy approach being silent, taking cautious steps and keeping low to the ground so they are not sighted or heard by the prey.
Tigers typically kill by ambushing prey, throwing the prey off balance with their mass as they leap onto it.
They use two tactics to kill the prey when they are close enough –
a) Small animal weighing less than half the body weight of the tiger are killed by a bite to the back of the neck. The canines are inserted between the neck vertebrate forcing them apart and breaking the spinal cord.
b) For larger animal a bite to the throat is used to crush the animals trachea and suffocate it.
The throat bite is the safer killing tactic because it minimizes any physical assault the tiger may receive while trying to kill the prey.
After the prey is taken cover, tigers feed first on the buttock using the carnassials to rip open the carcass.
Preys are usually dragged to cover and may be left there and revisited over several days.
Not all the preys are eaten, some parts are rejected.
Feeds at wild at nature:
The majority of the tiger diet consists of various large ungulate species like deer, antelope, gazelle, water buffalo, wild boar etc.
Smaller animals are sometimes taken when larger animals are not available including larger birds like Pheasants, leopards, fish, crocodiles, turtles, procupines, rat and frogs..
A very Royal Bengal Tigers begins to hunt humans.
Tigers will eat between 18 to 40 kg of meat at a time in nature.
They do not typically eat everyday in wild nature.
Feeding at Bangladesh National Zoo:
7 to 12 kg beef/day/animal
Standard commercial feeding strategy for Felidae :
For captive animals – meat and live animal alternatively at every day
For semi captive or moat animals - meat for 5 days in a week , live animal for once in a week and one day off feeding.