Prey of tigers
Tigers spend a large proportion of their time hunting and typically travel widely to find enough to eat.
- Tigers can be described as opportunistic predators.
- Tigers hunt mainly between dusk and dawn, although they will hunt in the daytime – especially if conditions are severe. Their hunting pattern tends to follow the activity pattern of principal prey species.
- Tigers are adept at using landscape features such as forest roads, gullies, logging tracks, watercourses, animal trails etc to facilitate their travel.
- Tigers also spend periods waiting where prey is abundant – near water source, salts licks, and meadow edges.
Wild pig and deer of various species make up the bulk of a tiger’s diet across their range, and in general tigers require a good population of these species in order to survive and reproduce.
- Adult tigers need to kill 50 – 60 large prey animals per year. This number increases for females with dependent cubs.
- The preferred prey species are those approximately the same weight as the tigers.
- Tigers can take ungulates much larger than themselves – including large bovids such as gaur, young elephants and rhino.
- In south-east Asian lowland forest (such as in Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia) the diet is thought to include a greater diversity of smaller prey as a matter of necessity given the low productivity of the habitat. In these areas, wild pigs are the preferred prey species.
- Although living solely on a diet of small prey may allow tigers to survive, it will probably be insufficient to enable the rearing of young.
- The diet of tigers includes a very wide range of species. In addition to the above, these include birds, fish, rodents, insects, amphibians, reptiles including crocodiles, primates, porcupines, tapirs and on occasions other carnivores such as leopards, bears, and even other tigers. Domestic dogs can be taken when conditions are difficult.
- Tigers rarely consume carrion.
Tigers are “stalk & ambush” hunters.
- Usually tigers hunt by stalking prey from behind to within < 25 metres before making a final rush, relying on quickly overtaking prey rather than pursuing it for any distance. Attacks are usually abandoned if not successful within 150 – 200 metres.
- Prey is caught and held with claws and then killed with a neck-breaking bite to the nape of small prey or a suffocating, clamping bite to the throat (or muzzle) of large prey.
- Attacks on prey are often unsuccessful. Estimates of hunting success vary from 5 to 50%
- Tigers rarely eat prey immediately at the kill site – they more usually drag the animal into cover before feeding. Even prey several times their own weight are moved. Thereby tiger kills are guarded from other predators.
- Tigers usually eat and rest intermittently, and often spend 2-4 days or longer with a large kill, eating 15 – 40kgs of meat per day. They usually start feeding on the hindquarters until most of the edible parts are consumed. When the body cavity is opened, the stomach is removed and the carcase usually dragged a short distance before feeding continues.
- If they do leave a kill before they have finished – for example to drink – they usually cover the remains by raking leaves, dirt, grass and even rocks over the carcass.
- Cooperative hunting has been occasionally observed (eg in Ranthambore, India), although this is very unusual.