Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1894 — TIGERS AND THEIR PREY. [ARTICLE]

TIGERS AND THEIR PREY.

Some Information as to How They Make Their Attack. A correspondent who has seen a great deal of forest life in India writes on the subject of how tigers secure their prey. As a general rule, ho is inclined to doubt the truth of the commonly accepted theory that the tiger, after lurking in ambush, springs on to the unsuspecting victim, and, tearing savagely at hi 6 throat, eagerly drinks his blood. This method of attack may sometimes be adopted, but it is far more often the exception than the rule. In approaching his prey the tiger makes the best possible use of cover, but when further concealment is impossible he will course a deer or other swift-footed animal with extraordinary speed. A sudden dash of 200 yaids in the open is nothing uncommon, and the writer mentions the case of one tigress which used to catch hogs or deer almost daily on a perfectly open and burned-up plain. Small animals are, for the most part, dispatched with a blow of the paw; but in the case of the more bulky, the experienced tiger, leaping on the back of his victim, grips the neck in front of the withers vrtth his jaws, one forepaw clasping the shoulder of the animal and the other fully extended under the throat. Should he be unable to crush tne spine with his jaws, he will then jerk the head back violently and thereby break the neck. In removing his prey the tiger frequently displays almost "phenomenal strength and activity. In one case cited, a young tigress leaped up a perpendicular rock, come six feet high, with a man weighing nearly eleven stone in iher ;aws, and on another occasion a male tiger dragged an exceptionally large buffalo up a bank at least ten feet high.