Abandoned Sub-Adult Four Tigers Give Hope To Bandipur Park Officials Of Reaching Adulthood

After they caught the attention of Park officials, these abandoned sub-adult tigers were fed by Park officials with meat to help them sustain without their mother and now they have started to hunt on their own preying on small animals such as rabbits (through natural instincts) raising hopes among forest officials that these sub-adult tigers would reach stage of fully grown tigers (adulthood).

Director of Bandipur Tiger Reserve, spread across Mysuru and Chamarajanagar districts, S. Prabhakaran told Deccan Chronicle on Monday “These (orphaned) sub-adult tigers came to the notice of Park officials about a month back and since then a constant monitoring has been on their movements using drone camera.”

“These sub-adult tigers are healthy,” said the Director and stated “There is no clue of their mother. She might have died but no carcass was recovered to ascertain her death.”

Normally, tiger cubs stay with mother for about a year-and-a-half before they go separate ways to live on their own in the wild and during their stay with the mother learn hunting and other skills for them to survive in the wild. But, these sub-adult tigers lost their mother mid-way of their learning process.

“We are not intervening with these abandoned sub-adult tigers except minimal intervention,” he said and stated “A constant watch has been kept on their movements to find if they go weak (lack of food/diseases affecting them).” However, these sub-adults are not free from attacks from other predators such as from tigers, leopards, dholes among others and Prabharan said “Cannabalism is common in tigers.”

To guard these sub-adult tigers, Park officials have stopped operating safari route where these tigers constantly move.