TIGER BEHAVIOR: COMMUNICATION, MATING AND CUB-RAISING

TIGER BEHAVIOR

Tigers are cursorial (with limbs adapted to running), diurnal (active during the daytime), nocturnal (active at night), crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk), motile (move around as opposed to being stationary), nomadic (move from place to place, generally within a well-defined range), sedentary (remain in the same area), solitary, territorial (defend an area within the home range). [Source: Kevin Dacres, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

Tigers tend to be solitary animals but are not adverse to occasional congregations. The only long-term relationship among tigers is between a mother and her offspring. Tigers can be active at any time of the day or night, and are particularly active at dawn and dusk. They are most active when their wild ungulate prey are most active, which often at night. They are very secretive and like to hang out in places where they are hidden or hard to see. John Seidensticker of the National Zoo described tigers: "Always secretive — never devious. Always a killer — never a murderer. Solitary — never alone. Most of the information below relates to Bengal tigers in India, the most well-studied tigers.

Tigers can climb trees, using their retractible claws and powerful legs. They have tremendous leaping ability, being able to leap from eight to 10 meters. Leaps of half that distance are more typical. Tigers are quite good swimmers and unlike many felines they seem to like the water. The can often be seen cooling off in pools or streams on a hot days and like to chase prey into water where they feel they have an advantage. They also get relief from the heat by resting in shady areas. Water usually doesn't act as a barrier to their movement. Tigers can easily cross rivers as wide as six to eight kilometers and have been known to cross a width of 29 kilometers in the water.

Tigers are regarded as smart and resourceful. In "The Face of the Tiger", Charles McDougal wrote: “The tiger is a first-class naturalist and knows the seasonal and activity patterns of various prey animals — where they may be found, and when they will be feeding or resting. When hunting the tiger moves slowly, making maximum use of cover for concealment, frequently pausing to listen and watch.”

Tiger Territory

The size of a tiger's territory ranges is 64 to 9252 square kilometers. Tigers need a territory with a radius of around 20 kilometers and tend to stick to fairly well-defined areas. Males and females often occupy territories that overlap. Female Bengal tigers, for example, occupy a six square mile territory, which they vigorously defend against other females. The territory of a Bengal male may overlap with the territory of four or more females. When a territorial tiger dies or move on, transient tigers move in.

Home range sizes vary depending on the density of prey and the sex of the tiger. Female Indian tigers have home range sizes from 200 to 1000 square kilometers ; a male's home range averages between two to 15 times larger. Within their home range tigers maintain several dens, often among dense vegetation or in a cave, cavity under a fallen tree, or in a hollow tree. Tigers often defend exclusive home ranges, but they have also been known to peacefully share home ranges or wander permanently, without any home range. Tigers may cover as much as 16 to 32 kilometers in a single night. [Source: Kevin Dacres, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

Tigers mark their territory with urine and secretions released by glands in their paws. They often gouge trees with their claws so their their scent will remain behind a long time. This glands that release the scent are the same ones females use to give off their distinctive estrus scent to let males know they are available. Tigers grimace when they sniff scents found in their territory. Known as flehmen behavior, the facial movement helps expose the scent to the sensory-cell-covered vomeronasal organ behind the palate. This behavior is most often seen in areas where tigers encounter the scent sprayed by other cats.

Tigers will fight over territory. Breeden heard two tigers release blood-curdling roars as they prepared to fight. He didn't witness a fight but he saw the result. The loser had a "a huge swath of skin and flesh ripped away between his eyes and down his nose. The wounds became infected and because the tiger was unable to hunt and three months later he was found dead. The winner. who suffered only a few scratches, took over his territory.

Tigers Senses and Communication

Tigers sense and communicate with vision, touch, sound and chemicals usually detected by smelling. They also employ choruses (joint displays, usually with sounds, by individuals of the same or different sexes), pheromones (chemicals released into air or water that are detected by and responded to by other animals of the same species) and scent marks produced by special glands and placed so others can smell and taste them. [Source: Kevin Dacres, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

According to Animal Diversity Web: Communication among tigers are maintained by scent markings, visual signals, and vocalization. Scent markings are deposited in the form of an odorous musky liquid that is mixed with urine and sprayed on objects like grass, trees, or rocks. A facial expression called “flehmen” is often associated with scent detection. During flehmen, the tongue hangs over the incisors, the nose is wrinkled, and the upper canines are bared. Flehmen is commonly seen in males that have just sniffed urine, scent marks, an estrous tigress, or a cub of their own species. /=\

Visual signals made by tigers include spots that have been sprayed, scrapes made by raking the ground, and claw marks left on trees or other objects. Schaller (1967) described a “defense threat” facial expression observed when a tiger is attacking. This involved pulling the corners of the open mouth back, exposing the canines, fattening the ears, and enlarging the pupils of the eyes. The spots on the back of their ears and their pattern of stripes may also be used in intraspecific communication.

Tiger Vocalizations

Kevin Dacres wrote in Animal Diversity Web: Tigers communicate vocally with roars, growls, snarls, grunts, moans, mews, and hisses. Each sound has its own purpose, and appears to reflect the tiger's intent or mood. For example, a tiger’s roar is usually a signal of dominance; it tells other individuals how big it is and its location. A moan communicates submission. The ability of tigers to roar comes from having a flexible hyoid apparatus and vocal fold with a thick fibro- elastic pad that allows sound to travel long distances. [Source: Kevin Dacres, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

A tiger roar is arguably one of the scariest noises on the planet. Stanley Breeden, at naturalist who spent ten years studying tigers, wrote in National Geographic that the roar made by a tiger on the verge of fighting is "an unearthly sound that shakes the forest." He said the full throated roar lasted for about ten minutes and was followed by silence. He didn't witness the fight that took place afterwards but he did see the chewed up loser of the fight.

Tigers as well as lynxes and pumas purr like house cats and make distinctive mating calls. The zoo in Bhubaneswar, India contains a tigress that climbed a concrete wall and broke into the zoo when it was a wild animal to seek a captured male that it heard calling.

Mating Tigers

Tigers are polygynandrous (promiscuous), with both males and females having multiple partners. For the most part they are solitary and do not associate with mates except for mating. Female tigers come into estrus every three to nine weeks and are receptive for three to six days. Local males may compete for access to females in estrus. Female tigers give birth every three to four years, depending on the length of dependence of previous cubs. Tigers breed throughout the year and are particularly active in the cool dry season from November to April. Ovulation is induced by mating. If conceptions occurs two to three cubs are born 95 to 110 days later. If the female doesn't conceive she become receptive again in 25 days. .[Source: Kevin Dacres, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

Tiger couples mate when the female is in heat and can copulate several times an hour. The male mounts the female after she signals she is ready by tucking her legs underneath her and crouching. During mating the male often bites the female’s neck and the female responds by turning her head around and roaring right in the males face. The noises made by copulating tigers have been compared to a “chorus” of “a hundred pairs of noisy cats...multiplied copiously.”

The mating goes on for about three days. Before sex begins, tigers often rub faces. Sometimes there is a big fight that leaves both the male and female with bite marks and cuts. After the sex the female often rolls on her back and the male flops down for a rest.

During the mating period, male and female are side by side around the clock for a week, often mimicking each other’s moves. When a female gives hear mating roar and then urinates the male does the same thing. After a kill has been made the male will sometimes sniff the female, give a mating roar, circle her a few times and then wrestled with her.

Tiger Cubs and Births

Tigers are iteroparous. This means that offspring are produced in groups such as litters multiple times in successive annual or seasonal cycles. The number of offspring ranges from one to seven, with the average number of offspring being 2.65, with the average number of offspring being two or three individuals. The gestation period ranges from 96 to 111 days, with the average being 103 days. [Source: Kevin Dacres, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

Tigers are altricial. This means that young are born relatively underdeveloped and are unable to feed or care for themselves or move independently for a period of time after birth. During the pre-fertilization, pre-birth, pre-weaning and pre-independence stages rovisioning and protecting are done by females. There is an extended period of juvenile learning. /=\

Newborn cubs weigh 0.78 to 1.6 kilograms (1.5 to four 4 pounds) and are about the size of puppies. They are born helpless with their eyes closed like kittens. Their eyes do not open until six to 14 days after birth and the ears from nine to 11 days after birth. The mother spends most of her time nursing the young during this vulnerable stage. Cubs are usually born in a cave and suckle on their mother for about 45 minutes at a time. Before the mother goes off hunting, sometimes for up to 24 hours, she carefully bites the cubs and lifts them by the scruff of their neck and hides them. Tigresses generally give birth once every two years after producing cubs for the first time when they are four of five. If a tigress lives to the age of 18 and raises two cubs every two years she will raise around a dozen cubs in her lifetime.

Tigers litters contain three to five cubs but generally only two survive the first month. The chances of cubs survival to adulthood are slim. Mothers sometimes abandon their cubs and male tigers sometimes kill cubs and eat them. Some cubs die in monsoon floods, brush fires, or fights with other tigers. Others are killed by humans, jackals, crocodiles, wild boars, and dholes. Yet others die from starvation after being born with physical deformities or suffering injuries. One well-studied 16-year-female gave birth to 18 cubs over 11 years but only seven survived into adulthood.

Tiger Cub Upbringing

Mother tigers stay with their cubs for about two years. The cubs feed on meat at three or four months brought to the den by their mother. They are weaned after five months and from then on are taken to hidden kills by their mother to eat. A mother caring for cubs must increase her killing rate by 50 percent in order to get enough nutrition to satisfy herself and her offspring. Mothers often have an exhausted look on their face at this stage. Male tigers generally do not provide parental care.

The average weaning age is 90 to 100 days, with independence occurring on average at 18 months. Cubs start following their mother at about two months old and begin to take some solid food at that time. From five to six months old the cubs begin to take part in hunting expeditions. Cubs stay with their mother until they are 18 months to three years old. [Source: Kevin Dacres, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

Sometimes males help out with child rearing duties. They have been observed playing with and traveling with cubs. Fathers have “survival of the fittest” reasons to look after the cubs. Sometimes rival males will kill the cubs and mate with their mother. When females lose their cubs they often go into heat again.

Tiger Cubs Grow Up and Learn to Hunt

Cubs are dependent on their mother until they become proficient hunters themselves, when they reach 18 months to three years old. Young tigers must learn to stalk, attack, and kill prey from their mother. Establishing bonds are important for tiger cubs in their first year of life. Cubs rub their faces against their mother's face, similar to the way domestic cats rub up against people. Mothers in turn lick the faces of their offspring.

Cubs learn to hunt from their mothers. During the first several months the mother teaches her offspring hunting skills by playing hide-and-seek games with them in the tall grass and teaching them pounce and grab her tail. Later the cubs accompany their mother on a hunt. The training lasts for a year-and-a-half to two years. The cubs then often stay together for a year because they are too inexperienced to hunt on their own. Young tigers play and romp around to sharpen their hunting skills and create sibling bonds. In the early stages of training cubs are often able to knock down prey but they have trouble delivering the fatal bite to finish the animal off. Sometimes the mother will cripple an animal rather than kill it to assist the cubs in their learning.

When tigers are 18 to 24 months old they leave their mothers. Generally the roam around for months or years before they are able to establish their own territories. Often they end up competing with parents or siblings for territory and sometimes engage in fights to the death with them. Tigers that reach adolescence have about a 50 percent chance of living to a normal age. Young males at this age often disperse but daughters will often continue to live near their mother for much of their life and inherit their mother’s territory when she dies. On average females reach sexual or reproductive maturity at three to four years; males do so at four to five years.

Tigers and Other Animals

Tiger are a keystone species, meaning their presence or absence strongly affects populations of other species in area where they live. Tigers help regulate populations of their large herbivores prey, which put pressure on plant communities. Tigers have no natural predators, except for humans. Adult tigers, are potential predators of younger cubs. Animals such as dholes, leopards and clouded leopards will also take cubs.

Leopards sometimes share the same range with tigers and lions but usually go out of their way to avoid them and occupy different ecological niches. An adult tiger weighs four times more than an adult leopard. If a leopard is seen in territory previously occupied by a tiger, it probably means the tiger has been poached. Sometimes mongooses and scavengers join the tiger at his kill and help themselves to a few bites before being driven off. On occasion crocodiles steal a tiger's kill.

Elephants and tigers both go out of their way to avoid a confrontation with the other. When confronted with a tiger, some elephants will bravely hold their ground while other will flee with their tail between their legs. Encounters with wild bison are similar, while rhinos and elephants seem to tolerate one another

Many tiger watching expeditions take place on the backs elephants. Tigers tend to ignore elephants with human passengers. Sometimes they charge elephants carrying toutiest. But very rarely. Elephants in Nepal bang their trunk to ground with a loud thump when they first sense that a tiger is nearby. To alert elephants far away they emit a deep rumble.Tigers sometimes charge elephants and vehicles, but very rarely.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated January 2025