The tiger is like a living territory, why give up defense? Scientists tracked for 8 months found the truth

In the wild, every cat species has its own territory, which is the basis for its survival. In many tiger documentaries, we can see that tigers fight for a piece of territory. Many tigers are injured or even die in the fight for territory.

Figure: Two tigers fight for territory

However, scientists' research foundTigers will not always regard territory as so important.The Russian Wildlife Protection Association's scientists tracked a Northeast Asian tiger in Russia's Far East for8 months without interruptionresulting inA period of time, the Northeast tiger will proactively abandon defense of its territory.

For cubs, the female tiger makes huge changes and sacrifices

This female tiger, named Vavara, was female. To facilitate the study, scientists installed a GPS tracking collar for it, which could transmit real-time signals of location, temperature, etc. When this female tiger began to mate with a male tiger, the scientists' tracking began.

Figure: Young female tiger Vavara

To avoid human interference affecting the behavior of this female tiger, scientists took'Always one step behind the tiger'tracking method: do not let the female tiger notice herself, butfollow her footprints in the snow behindto track.

Following the female tiger's footprints, scientists could determine its activity range, find its prey, estimate the time it spent with prey, and understand how it returned to those locations. During the investigation, scientists almost every day went to the scene to check where it had been, what it had done.

Through field observation and the signals transmitted by the GPS tracking collar, 4 months after the female tiger gave birth to cubs, scientists made a surprising discovery:The female tiger Vavara's territory shrank from its original 500 square kilometers to 180 square kilometers, a reduction of 220 square kilometers.

The reason for the reduction in territory area was becauseThe female tiger Vavara proactively abandoned defense of its territory for the sake of cubs.

Figure: Female tiger Vavara

In normal circumstances, if there were no cubs, the female tiger's daily activities mainly consisted of three things: hunting, resting, and patrolling its territory.Scientists found that after cubs were born, the female tiger Vavara shifted most of its time spent patrolling its territory and resting to caring for cubs.Tigers are solitary cat species, and the work of raising cubs is done by the female tiger alone. Each tiger cub lives in a'Single-parent family'

Scientists tracked the female tiger Vavara's territory before and after giving birth for 4 months. Vavara's challenges and difficulties were one by one presented to the scientists. However, for raising cubs, Vavara made great sacrifices, which is truly touching.Figure: Female tiger Vavara using scent to mark territory

When cubs grow up and can live independently, the female tiger Vavara will once again shift its focus to defending its territory.So, why do tigers regard territory as life?The three elements of a tiger's territoryIf a tiger chooses a region as its territory, then this region has three elements: sufficient prey, abundant water sources, and abundant vegetation.

And these three elements are indispensable to the survival of tigers.1. Sufficient preyObviously, tigers need prey to survive and raise cubs. Unlike small cats, tigers' prey includes a large number of large herbivores, such as wild boars, deer, qizi, and wild cattle.

Figure: Tiger hunting

2. Abundant water

Water is the source of life. On the one hand, tigers need water to supplement their bodies; on the other hand, tigers need water to cool down. Tigers lack sweat glands, so when the weather is hot, if the heat stored in their bodies is not released, their lives will be threatened, so they often jump into the water to cool down.

Life in India's Bengal tigers sometimes hides prey in water to prevent other carnivores from stealing it.Figure: Female tiger with cubs bathing in the water

• 3. Abundant vegetation

Vegetation provides tigers with cool places, and it also helps tigers hide. In open areas, tigers are easily detected; in dense vegetation, tigers are difficult for other animals to find.

So, when tigers hunt, they often lurk in vegetation until they decide to attack.

• Figure: Tiger hiding in vegetation preparing to hunt

Regarding a tiger's territory, the above three elements are indispensable.

If a tiger's territory is invaded by another tiger, it means that the former loses sufficient prey, drinking water and vegetation.

• Without the territory, the tiger will be severely affected and may die of hunger.

Conversely, scientists also judge a region's ecological conditions based on whether a tiger chooses a region as its territory.

Where there are tigers, there are abundant animal and plant resources and sufficient water and ecological environment. To introduce tigers to a region, you must have these three elements; to make a region's tigers survive long-term, you must monitor these three elements' conditions in real-time, avoid 'shortcomings'.

What factors are related to the size of a tiger's territory?

1. Gender differenceThe female tiger Vavara's territory reached 500 square kilometers, which was surprising. However, in the Northeast Asian tiger world, this is not much, the male Northeast Asian tiger's territory can be more than 1000 square kilometers. Male tigers' territories are often larger than female tigers' territories, because male tigers pursue mates.

Generally, a male tiger's territory overlaps with 1 to 3 female tigers' territories

• so male tigers have the right to mate with these female tigers, thereby spreading their genes more widely.

Figure: Female tiger2. Subspecies and habitat differencesCurrently, there are 6 surviving tiger subspecies in the world, namely the Northeast Asian tiger and Northeast China's Northeast China tiger, Bengal tiger in India and Bangladesh, Southeast Asia's Indochina tiger, Sumatran tiger in Indonesia, Malaysian tiger in Malaysia, and South China tiger in China. Due to the different geographical locations and habitat environments (plant species and prey quantity) of the tiger subspecies, the size of their territories also varies greatly.

For example, Northeast Asian tigers' territories are usually more than 300 square kilometers; South China tigers' territories are about 100 square kilometers; while Bengal tigers' territories are about 20 square kilometers.

• Why is the Northeast Asian tiger's territory so large? Because

Figure: Malaysian tiger

3. Tiger density

Even for the same subspecies of tigers, due to the differences in tiger density in different regions, the size of their territories also varies. For example, in India, there are dozens of tiger protected areas, and in the past 20 years, the number of tigers has increased year by year. In 2019, it reached nearly 3000. However, most of India's tiger protected areas have not increased in area. This indirectly shows one problem: in many of India's tiger protected areas, the size of a tiger's territory increases with the increase in tiger density.The increase in tiger density means that there will be more conflicts between tigers.

Tiger density and tiger's attitude towards territory

• 3.

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