SIBERIAN TIGERS BEHAVIOR: HUNTING, PREY, REPRODUCTION, CUBS

SIBERIAN TIGERS

Siberian tiger

The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is the world's largest cat. Also known as the Amur tiger, Manchurian tiger and Korean tiger, it can weigh up to 363 kilograms (800 pounds). It is the only tiger that lives in the snow. Television naturalist David Attenborough called the Siberian tiger spectacularly large and said its large size is not unexpected because large size offers advantages in cold temperatures. [Source: Howard Quigley, National Geographic July 1993; Maurice Hornocker, National Geographic, February, 1997; Peter Matthiessen, The Independent, March 5, 2000]

The Siberian tiger is a subspecies of tiger (Panthera tigris). It is larger than the Bengal tigers and twice as large as other Asian tiger subspecies. Its thick coat makes it appear even larger. There around 400 to 500 left in the wild, mainly in the Primorye region of the Russian Far East — the largest continuous tiger population the world — and another 800 to 1,000 in captivity. India has more tigers than Russia but their population is broken up and fragmented.

Siberian tigers once inhabited all of Korea and much of Manchuria, eastern China and Siberia, perhaps as far east as Mongolia and Lake Baikal. On the banks of the Amur River archeologist have discovered 6,000 year old depictions of tigers carved by the Goldis people. Now the Siberian tiger's range is limited to a 625-mile-long, 75-mile-wide, 60,000-square-mile strip of land in eastern Siberia near Vladivostok along the Pacific Ocean just north of North Korea. The heart of their range is the watershed of the Amur River and its tributary, the Ussuri, which forms the eastern border between Russia and China.

Book: Tigers in the Snow by Peter Matthiessen (Harvill Press, 2000]

Siberian Tiger Behavior

Siberian tiger mother and cub

Siberian tigers sharpen their claws by standing on their hind legs and raking them downwards in the bark of a tree. Siberian tigers have long memories. Offspring of a mother killed by poachers were still agitated as adults whenever they came in close contact with human males. Males sometimes live only six or seven year as they die in competition for mates and territory.

Dunishenko and Kulikov wrote: “Tigers are big lazybones. Or maybe it’s just that tigers are a better judge of the important things in life. They don’t wear themselves out with long migrations. They lay down to rest fairly often. That makes it possible to measure the size of the animal’s imprint, and if the length is more than two meters (6.5 feet), certainly a male. Aside from all this, males mark their territory very actively. They mark anything prominent — burnt stumps, stones sticking out of the snow and even clumps of hay that have fallen to the side of a path. This is a way of communicating with one’s cohorts in the taiga, who are sure to check any prominent objects for signs. They will approach the object and take a “read” of everything that they need to know. An animal’s urine has a strong pre-anal gland scent that contains an abundance of useful information that humans can’t smell. But it is something that a dog can smell. [Source: “The Amur Tiger” by Yury Dunishenko and Alexander Kulikov, The Wildlife Foundation, 1999 ~~]

“The tiger is quiet. We have wandered about in its habitat for 25 years, getting close to it on occasion, and in all that time, we have heard a tiger roar fewer than five times. But once is enough, for its thunder chills the blood in one’s veins and leaves an impression that lasts a lifetime. One just wants to instantly teleport away to a comfortable, urban setting. Or to climb a tree and sit up there for a while. Tigers roar when irritated. They roar during fights. When mating, females either meow or snort like a horse. Cubs that have lost their mother are the most vocal; they seem to scream all the time. The tiger trapper Vladimir Kruglov told us that those wishing to discover a tiger save much time and effort by listening at night.~~

“The tiger is considered a dawn-and-dusk. It is most active in the mornings and evenings. During the day, it prefers to lounge around on a cliff somewhere or to hang out on the edge of a ridge where it can get a better look around, where it can listen for what is moving around below. But when the snow is thick and the weather is overcast, tigers are active even during the day.~~

“Young who must follow in their mother’s tracks experience certain difficulties: their stride is shorter than their mother’s and so they have to occasionally jump, and this is fatiguing. Tigers don’t climb trees. An adult tiger will sometimes try to scramble up an inclined tree. Cubs are a different matter. They gladly walk along the trunks of tree that has fallen over, often in an attempt to avoid dogs and other threats.~~

“Such are the ways of the tiger. It spends its entire life moving around and resting near the prey that it kills. No joys or distractions. A tiger is a serious and elusive animal. You don’t see it; you don’t hear it: is it there or isn’t it? The tiger is a powerful animal, but one that is defenseless in the face of modern technological progress.~~

Siberian Tiger Personalities

According to a study published in the peer-reviewed academic journal the Royal Society in April 2023, Siberian tigers have personality differences can impact their health and behavior. In 2022, Rosalind Arden, a cognitive researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, focused on 248 Siberian tigers living in two wildlife sanctuaries in northeastern China where groups of tigers roam in large fenced-in area of forests or snowy grasslands. Jack Tamisiea wrote in Science: The team invited more than 50 feeders and veterinarians to fill out questionnaires with lists of 67 to 70 adjectives that described tiger personality traits for each cat in their care. These words ranged from “savage” and “imposing” to “dignified” and “friendly.” The researchers designed the questionnaires to mimic human personality tests. [Source: Jack Tamisiea, Science, April 4, 2023]

In total, the caretakers completed more than 800 questionnaires, offering the researchers multiple personality surveys on each tiger. A battery of statistical analyses revealed whether particular adjectives clustered around certain tigers. Two distinct personality types emerged that accounted for nearly 40% of the tigers’ behaviors. Tigers that scored higher on words such as confident, competitive, and ambitious fell under what the researchers labeled as the “majesty” mindset. Those that exhibited traits such as obedience, tolerance, and gentleness were grouped together under the “steadiness” mindset. Together, these two personalities explained 38 percent of the behavioral differences displayed by the tigers in the study.

According to Williams, the new findings resemble past data on both wild and domestic cats. She cites a review article that found the most common personality types across felines are sociable, dominant, and curious. “It would seem that ‘majesty’ aligns quite closely with a ‘dominant’ personality component,” she says, “and their ‘steadiness’ component aligns with components such as ‘calm.’”

These personality types seem to make a difference. Based on their weights and eating habits, the tigers with majesty mindsets were generally healthier than those with steadiness personalities. They also hunted more, mated more often, and had more breeding success. Tigers that scored higher on majesty traits also appeared to have a higher social status than tigers that scored higher in steadiness traits, according to their caretakers.

Siberian Tiger Territory

Siberian tigers can range over 400 square miles. Male Siberian tigers generally range across an area of 150 to 225 square miles. Females range cover a slightly smaller area. 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 usually seen in areas where other cats have sprayed their scent.

Siberian tigers are known to travel up to 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) over ecologically unbroken country. In 1992 and 1993, the maximum total population density of the Sikhote-Alin tiger population was estimated at 0.62 tigers in 100 square kilometers (39 square miles). The maximum adult population estimated in 1993 reached 0.3 tigers in 100 square kilometers (39 square miles), with a sex ratio of averaging 2.4 females per male. [Source: Wikipedia]

Dunishenko and Kulikov wrote: “A tiger won’t live just anywhere. Each animal has a home range where it perpetually makes its rounds. The size of the range depends upon the abundance of prey and can vary from 200 to 500 kilometers (125-310 miles). For some males, the range is even larger. The animal is seldom in a rush. A move of 20-30 kilometers (12.5-19 miles) in the course of a winter’s night is typical. If game is present, the predator will spend several days on a kill. That is, of course, if no one bothers the tiger and if there is not an urge to move on. Tigers sometimes make kills and may not consume the entire kill. [Source: “The Amur Tiger” by Yury Dunishenko and Alexander Kulikov, The Wildlife Foundation, 1999 ~~]

“Sometimes a tiger will move 70-100 kilometers (45-63 miles) from its home range. Tigers may patrol home ranges to mark territorial boundaries to exclude adjacent tigers, to look for a mate, or perhaps in search of a territory with better pickings. The allegation that a tiger is wasteful, that it kills more than it can eat, is extremely controversial. Scientists who have tracked tigers for years believe that the animal will always return to a kill, no matter how many days have passed. It’s another thing entirely if a human comes upon a tiger’s kill, stamping around out of curiosity or cutting off a piece to feed the dogs. In this situation the tiger will certainly abandon his kill, passing by at a distance, cursing to himself as he moves away from danger. ~~

Siberian Tiger Mating

Siberian tigers mate at any time of the year. A female signals her receptiveness by leaving urine deposits and scratch marks on trees. She will spend 5 or 6 days with the male, during which she is receptive for three days. Gestation lasts from 3 to 3½ months. Litter size is normally two or four cubs but there can be as many as six. The cubs are born blind in a sheltered den and are left alone when the female leaves to hunt for food. [Source: Wikipedia]

Dunishenko and Kulikov wrote: “Only female tigers with cubs construct up dens. Even so, comfort is not a big deal. Her main concern is that nothing is dripping from above. As for bedding, some dry leaves or grass are scattered around the den in the best of cases, and most often, the litter from a wild boar’s rest site does the trick. A tiger will look for a ready-made roof: under a stump. Or a hanging cliff, in a shallow cave, and as a rule, beneath a crest or on a southern slope. [Source: “The Amur Tiger” by Yury Dunishenko and Alexander Kulikov, The Wildlife Foundation, 1999 ~~]

“The male tiger is a poor and antisocial family man. He is itinerant and is a solo wanderer. Only during the mating period, which usually occurs in January and February, are the animals a bit more gregarious. Males will often brutally fight for the heart of a woman. The gestation period is 95-107 days. A female needs three and a half-years to reach the age when she can start supplementing the species. A male needs even longer - around four years.~~

“Controversy surrounds the timing of the mating period, and young cubs are discovered at various times of the year. For instance, in December 1993, not far from the headquarters of the Kutuzovskii hunting society, a hunter happened upon a den set up in some downed trees; it contained two young cubs. Their eyes were hardly open, a sign that they were fewer than ten days old. Their mother was nearby, but she didn’t leap to their defense. Frightened by a shot, she ran away and never returned. Both tiger cubs died of starvation and cold on the next day.~~

“In this case, pregnancy must have occurred in August or September. Perhaps the female simply didn’t get a chance to mate in the winter — a problem often faced by the younger breeding-age tigers. Possibly, this tiger’s mating period just got stretched out over a long period. Perhaps the animal acquired some funny habits after living side by side with humans for too long. In general, the sex life of a tiger is less well studied than that of mice. This is understandable, for the tiger is one kind of animal in the zoo and another entirely in the wild. One does not get much of a read by just looking at tiger tracks, especially in summer.~~

Siberian Tiger Cubs and Their Mothers

About 30 percent of Siberian tiger young die. Mothers sometimes abandon their cubs. Young tigers play and romp in the snow to sharpen their hunting skills and create sibling bonds. Just short of age three years tigers are sub-adults. Males reach sexual maturity at the age of four to six years. Cubs are divided equally between sexes at birth. However, by adulthood there are usually two to four females for every male. The female cubs remain with their mothers longer, and later they establish territories close to their original ranges. Males, on the other hand, travel unaccompanied and range farther earlier in their lives, making them more vulnerable to poachers and other tigers. A Siberian tiger family comprising an adult male, a female and three cubs were recorded in 2015. [Source: Wikipedia]

Dunishenko and Kulikov wrote: “Young tigers don’t grow proportionally and their paw sizes, especially for males, can be larger than their mother’s tracks. A certain logic operates here: a child will fall through the snow less often, and it will save its strength so as not to fall behind when moving long distances with its mother. The observant tracker takes into account this subtle detail to get an accurate read of the animal. The stride of a cub is shorter and the cub does not stick in the snow quite the same way as an adult animal does.~~

“Tigers cut their milk teeth two weeks after birth. At first their mother feeds them only milk, but when the cubs have gained a bit of strength, she takes them along to kills not far from the den; only in rare cases does she drag a red Manchurian deer or a wild boar back to the cubs. As the cubs grow, they begin to range farther and farther afield with their mother, moving from one kill to the next. Only they don’t take part in the hunt. When looking for new prey, the mother tiger abandons her cubs. And as they grow older, they are left alone for increasingly longer period of time. A female tiger might leave a six-month-old cub alone for two or three days, and a yearling for up to two weeks. [Source: “The Amur Tiger” by Yury Dunishenko and Alexander Kulikov, The Wildlife Foundation, 1999 ~~]

“The wildlife biologist Viktor Egorushin told us an interesting story about one such tiger. The tiger and her liter of four cubs unexpectedly came upon some hunters and then, in great leaps, bounded away in fear. Only the cubs couldn’t keep up with their mother, and they hid in a crevice. They sat there for ten days! Concerned with their fate, the wildlife personnel from the Sobolevskii Hunting Society brought them meat and threw into the opening of the pit. But the animals emitted no signs of life. Only on the tenth day did the female tiger return! No one knows why she returned on that day — did she plan it that way, or did her conscience suddenly bother her? How she announced her appearance to her cubs is also a mystery; she never got up close to the crevice. But the cubs came out to greet their mother and off they went together to continue their travels. True, only three of them came out of the crevice. Did they eat the fourth brother or sister? Maybe the little thing just wasn’t able to survive, and starved to death.~~

“This isn’t the usual way a female tiger will teach her cubs independence. Everything depends on the abundance of prey; if there is food around, she won’t abandon her cubs. She nurses them for six months and can’t leave them alone for long periods of time. As the litter’s food demands increase, she must worry about continuing to feed them.~~

“The cubs gradually begin to learn the subtleties of the trade. If their mother is delayed, they hunt smaller prey such a musk deer, hares and piglets the best way they can. Tigers don’t hunt in packs, the way wolves do. That is perhaps why tiger cubs are reared so long — for almost three years these overgrown, partially trained cubs, already the size of their mother, persistently follow in her tracks.~~

“Then, the family breaks up and each member begins worrying only about itself. A tiger lives 40-50 years, but according to our estimates, generation time is 15-20 years, if not shorter, in the wild. Natural losses are great for a number of reasons: tigers die from sickness, from hunting injuries, from drownings and in cunning traps. And they become victims of poachers’ bullets. They also kill one another; such cases are also documented but relatively rare and are surely not a significant cause of population decline.~~

Siberian Tiger Cubs and Killer, Cannibalistic Males

Dunishenko and Kulikov wrote: “In the 1997-98 winter, in the Khor River watershed alone, the bodies of cubs from three litters were discovered. All had been killed and eaten by males. The mother of two cubs had just left her six month-old cubs and the “father” followed in her tracks and caught the cubs. He had time to eat half of his easy prey before hunters spooked him. The female tiger returned in a day, and for several days afterwards her howl could be heard everywhere.~~

“In another instance, a male killed a cub almost in view of its mother. Only there weren’t any traces of a fight where the tussle took place. One might be surprised at the indifference displayed at the death of her only offspring. “In yet another instance, a female tiger acted much differently, and so fearlessly defended her two young cubs that she inflicted mortal wounds on the cannibal: the tendons on the legs were ripped and hunters found him dying. Incidents of cannibalism increase in frequency when there is little to eat in the forest but in intact native ecosystems cannibalism generally does not occur at significant rates. ~~

“This is not a rarity among large mammals. For example, a bear cub’s most feared enemy is a male from a different family. The same is probably the case with tigers; cannibals don’t eat their own offspring! But one way or the other, this is a sad fact that does nothing to help increase tiger numbers. It is yet another reason why the taiga is not full of tigers, this despite the fact that a litter many contain as many as five kittens. True, such fertility is rare, and even the appearance of four cubs occurs only once in a while. But when it does occur, it is usual for two or three of the cubs to survive until their third birthday. Besides, a female tiger doesn’t breed while raising her cubs, and this is another reason why she gives birth only once every two or three years.” ~~

According to the Miami Herald: An Amur tiger named Ivan that used to reside at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas killed its mate at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. During a mating session, an 8-year-old female Amur tiger named Zoya became aggressive with Ivan, who struck her in the neck. Keepers separated the two tigers with a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher, but Zoya died a few hours later from the injury. [Source: Miami Herald, July 24, 2016]

Siberian Tiger Prey

Siberian tigers need about five kilograms of meat a day but often eat in a feast–or-famine kind of way in which they go many days without eating anything. They feed primarily on goral, sitka deer, red Manchurian deer, elk, red deer and wild boar. They are large and strong enough to prey on elk. Tigers have been observed hunting bear. Other animals sense tigers in the winter by the crunching noise from the snow. Siberian stone pine produces a favorite food of wild boars, which in turn are a favorite food of Siberian tigers. In some places these trees have all been cut down, depriving the boars and tigers of food.

Prey species of the tiger include Manchurian wapiti (a kind of deer, Cervus canadensis xanthopygus), Siberian musk deer (Moschus moschiferus), long-tailed goral (Naemorhedus caudatus), moose (Alces alces), Siberian roe deer (Capreolus pygargus) sika deer (Cervus nippon), wild boar (Sus scrofa), and even sometimes small size Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus) and brown bears (Ursus arctos). Siberian tigers also take smaller prey like hares, rabbits, pikas and even salmon. Scat was collected along the international border between Russia and China between November 2014 and April 2015; 115 scat samples of nine tigers contained foremost remains of wild boar, sika deer and roe deer. [Source: Wikipedia]

Between January 1992 and November 1994, 11 tigers were captured, fitted with radio-collars and monitored for more than 15 months in the eastern slopes of the Sikhote-Alin mountain range. Results of this study indicate that their distribution is closely associated with distribution of Manchurian wapiti, while distribution of wild boar was not such a strong predictor for tiger distribution. Although they prey on both Siberian roe deer and sika deer, overlap of these ungulates with tigers was low. Distribution of moose was poorly associated with tiger distribution. The distribution of preferred habitat of key prey species was an accurate predictor of tiger distribution.

Results of a three-year study on Siberian tigers indicate that the mean interval between their kills and estimated prey consumption varied across seasons: during 2009 to 2012, three adult tigers killed prey every 7.4 days in summer and consumed a daily average of 7.9 kilograms (17.4 pound); in winter they killed more large-bodied prey, made kills every 5.7 days and consumed a daily average of 10.3 kilograms (23 pounds). Yury Dunishenko and Kulikov wrote:“In strength, it is unrivaled in the Russian Far East. There is a story of a tiger that killed a healthy mare and drug it almost a kilometer. In this case, the tiger was later shot and found to weigh a mere 140 kilograms (309 pounds.). [Source: “The Amur Tiger” by Yury Dunishenko and Alexander Kulikov, The Wildlife Foundation, 1999 ~~]

Siberian Tiger Prey in Khabarovskii Krai

Dunishenko and Kulikov wrote: "Tiger habitat in Khabarovskii Krai has 4,800 wild boar, 10,800 deer, 7,300 roe deer, 8,500 elk and 13,600 musk deer. In addition, bears, badgers, raccoon dogs, hares and other forest animals are also becoming the tiger’s prey. We know very little about the tiger’s summer feeding habits, but there are reasons to suggest that it preys on not just large mammals. The tsar of animals supplements its diet, as it can, with small things from the forest and has even been know to go after frogs. [Source: “The Amur Tiger” by Yury Dunishenko and Alexander Kulikov, The Wildlife Foundation, 1999 ~~]

"Side by side with the tiger are 740-780 brown bears and 1,800-2,000 Himalayan bears, around 100 wolves and approximately 130-140 lynxes and wolverines. To a certain extent, these animals also “live at the expense” of the ungulate populations. For example, wolves annually kill from six to ten percent of the musk deer, 5.5-11 percent of the wild boar, 2.5-10.7 percent of the red Manchurian deer and 2.5-6 percent of the roe deer and elk. A tiger is a large animal, and to say the least, it has a hearty appetite. It takes from 20-30 percent of the wild boar, 8.5-12.0 percent of the red Manchurian deer, 3.5-5.1 percent of the musk deer and 1.5-2.0 percent of the roe deer and elk.In absolute terms, this means that every year a tiger will do in 1,000 wild boar and red Manchurian deer, around 200 elk, a few more than 500 roe deer and 300 musk deer.~~

"If the ungulates were to suddenly stop reproducing, then the abundant predators and hunters would completely empty the taiga in 2-3 years. But nature looks after things. Could it really be that she didn’t sense our economic crisis, or the collapse of the state hunting industry, or the inability of protection agencies to maintain order? As estimates show, for the majority of species, the balance between use and reproduction is either just hanging on or is declining. As a result, there is a slow but steady decline in the number of wild ungulates, the main prey for predators.~~

"Predators never destroy their prey populations, and a certain balance is always maintained. Tigers are dependent upon their prey, and so tiger numbers will increase and decrease in direct relation to the number of prey. Predators don’t die of ennui. Offspring decrease in number as a result of starvation, young die more often, and adults begin to migrate more extensively. Tigers take on domestic animals and more and more often fall victim to a bullet.

Siberian Tigers on the Hunt

Siberian tigers like to hunt at night. They come alive in the winter and often hunt by waiting patiently in the brush and ambushing their prey along an animal track or near a river. They like to attack their prey from behind. Describing a tiger attack along a river, Peter Matthiessen wrote in the New Yorker: "From the evidence in the snow we were able to reconstruct what happened. The fore prints came together where the elk stopped short, in a place of elms and cottonwoods, some seventy yards from the crouched tiger. Perhaps the elk listened, sniffed, and trembled for a moment, big dark eyes round."

“From this taut point, it suddenly sprang sideways, attaining the far bank in one scared bound, as the tiger launched herself from hiding and cut across her quarry's route in ten-foot leaps, leaving silent round explosions in the snow. Shooting through the dark riverine trees like a tongue of fire, she overtook the big deer and hauled it down in a wood of birch and poplar about thirty-seven yards.".from where she started. Striking from behind, she'd grasped the throat, to suffocate her prey, for there was little blood — only the arcs of a bony elk leg sweeping weakly on the surface of the snow, and a sad last spasm of the creature's urine...Of the elk, all that remained were the legs, the head and the stiff, course hide, which are usually abandoned by the tiger. There was no meat left on the twisted carcass. They eyes were frozen to blue ice, too hard even for ravens."

Yury Dunishenko and Kulikov wrote: “A tiger hunts large animals: They hunt these with catlike precision. A tiger won’t drive an animal the way a wolf does. And it won’t track an animal to a point of exhaustion the way a bear does. A tiger will rarely follow tracks. Hearing is its most acute sense; it assures the tiger’s hunting success. The animal’s superb hearing is an aid in stalking; it helps the tiger determine the direction of the prey’s movement, making it possible to set up an ambush or to hide off to the side. A tiger can detect wind direction, and sets up his ambush so as to not be sensed by its prey. [Source: “The Amur Tiger” by Yury Dunishenko and Alexander Kulikov, The Wildlife Foundation, 1999 ~~]

“A tiger leaps onto the victim’s neck at a short distance. All it takes is several lunging leaps each spanning five to seven meters (16.5-23 feet) is all that is needed. The tiger doesn’t “break the back with a blow like a cannon shot,” as is sometimes reported in the literature. All the researchers studying tiger kills point to a single cause of death: a bite through the neck vertebrae at the base of the skull. The predator can even kill bears this way. It deftly makes its approach and with a single bite, the victim is rendered motionless. Do what you will, the victim is not going to recover. The power of the jaw is unimaginable — canine teeth grow to six centimeters (2.4 inches) in length. ~~

Stories of tigers hypnotizing their game are a bit exaggerated or are utterly false. And although there is something to the magic of a cat’s green eyes, the hypnosis is explained by how quickly it moves in for the attack. Even someone with a great deal of experience in the taiga gets spooked when sensing the presence of a tiger. Your head begins to nervously twitch. You suddenly remember the rifle thrown over your shoulder. You stare at suspicious objects. Nothing seems to be the matter, yet still, you loose your cool: is that a wild animal staring at you from out behind that spruce? ~~

Wolves, Bears and Siberian Tigers

Following a decrease of ungulate populations from 1944 to 1959, 32 cases of Amur tigers attacking both Ussuri brown (Ursus arctos lasiotus) and Ussuri black bears (U. thibetanus ussuricus) were recorded in the Russian Far East, and hair of bears were found in several tiger scat samples. Tigers attack black bears less often than brown bears, as the latter live in more open habitats and are not able to climb trees. In the same time period, four cases of brown bears killing female tigers and young cubs were reported, both in disputes over prey and in self-defense. Tigers mainly feed on the bear's fat deposits, such as the back, hams and groin. [Source: Wikipedia]

When Amur tigers prey on brown bears, they usually target young and sub-adult bears, besides small female adults taken outside their dens, generally when lethargic from hibernation. Predation by tigers on denned brown bears was not detected during a study carried between 1993 and 2002. Ussuri brown bears, along with the smaller black bears constitute 2.1 percent of the Siberian tiger's annual diet, of which 1.4 percent are brown bears.

The effect the presence of tigers has on brown bear behavior seems to vary. In the winters of 1970–1973, Yudakov and Nikolaev recorded two cases of bears showing no fear of tigers and another case of a brown bear changing path upon crossing tiger tracks. Other researchers have observed bears following tiger tracks to scavenge tiger kills and to potentially prey on tigers.Despite the threat of predation, some brown bears actually benefit from the presence of tigers by appropriating tiger kills that the bears may not be able to successfully hunt themselves.Brown bears generally prefer to contest the much smaller female tigers.[54] During telemetry research in the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve, 44 direct confrontations between bears and tigers were observed, in which bears in general were killed in 22 cases, and tigers in 12 cases.

Dunishenko and Kulikov wrote: " "If a bear can’t store up enough fat for five long winter months, it might as well not bother to hibernate. You can’t just suck nourishment out of your paw! When the taiga was wild and Korean pine forests and walnut groves provided stable harvests, bears encountered fewer problems. Now a bear is sometimes forced, before sacking out, and during the spring famine, to go for higher calorie victims. And so it begins to sneak up on wild boar, red Manchurian deer, and elk; it attacks the helpless newborns. ~~ [Source: “The Amur Tiger” by Yury Dunishenko and Alexander Kulikov, The Wildlife Foundation, 1999 ~~]

"What results is a noticeable, heightened competition with the tiger for food. Adults of both species are equal in strength. We heard one story about how a large “brown,” having taken on a wild board and covered it with scat and brushwood to make some “stewed boar, bear style,” suddenly got paid a visit by a hungry tiger. Oh how much blood got shed! The owner of the kill died from terrible wounds and the disfigured tiger, moving off like a drunk, didn’t even bother with the fresh spoils of the kill. Snow covered the tiger’s tracks, and the king of the jungle was never seen again in those lands. Apparently, both animals finished their fight in the world beyond. There is another story of a brown bear that went after two tiger cubs left by their mother near a red Manchurian deer that she had killed. When she returned after several days, the female tiger found only clumps of fur.” ~~

Tigers lower wolf numbers, either to the point of localized extinction or to such low numbers as to make them a functionally insignificant component of the ecosystem. Wolves appear capable of escaping competitive exclusion from tigers only when human pressure decreases tiger numbers. In areas where wolves and tigers share ranges, the two species typically display a great deal of dietary overlap, resulting in intense competition. Wolf and tiger interactions are well documented in Sikhote-Alin, where until the beginning of the 20th century, very few wolves were sighted. Today, wolves are considered scarce in tiger habitat, being found in scattered pockets, and usually seen travelling as loners or in small groups. First hand accounts on interactions between the two species indicate that tigers occasionally chase wolves from their kills, while wolves will scavenge from tiger kills. Tigers are not known to prey on wolves, though there are four records of tigers killing wolves without consuming them. Tigers recently released are also said to hunt wolves.

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, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2025