The tiger is mainly considered a territorial animal but some can undertake long and perilous journeys, away from their trusted forests and prey-bases. These remarkable tiger journeys have started coming to light fairly recently
George B Schaller, credited with carrying out the first-ever field study of tigers in India, as well as Jim Corbett, Billy Arjan Singh, and many others of the same tribe have fired our imagination and interest in the world of big cats. But one behavioural aspect of some tigers that eluded the attention of most experts and writers is their penchant for long-distance travels.
This facet of the tiger, which is mainly considered a territorial animal that seldom leaves its home turf on its own accord, has come to light fairly recently.
A young tiger of Maharashtra’s Tipeshwar Tiger Reserve, which recently walked 450 km out of its home turf, is the latest entrant in the growing line of striped wanderers. Several others before him have surrendered to a similar urge, leading to their great peregrinations towards terra incognita.
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A lonely death
Alas, not all of these journeys have had a happy ending. Take the case of an unnamed male that, for some unknown reason, started walking from a forest in Madhya Pradesh or Rajasthan and reached Gujarat!
The year was 2019. A school teacher in Mahisagar district of Eastern Gujarat was the first to lay eyes on him. It was a chance encounter of a few seconds, after which both ran away — in opposite directions.
Commotion and panic ensued, followed by a bout of enthusiasm among wildlife lovers. Now the state was blessed with three big cats: lions, leopards and now a tiger. Wasn’t it wonderful? Many of them thought so.
No, it wasn’t. The then Chief Wildlife Warden of Gujarat, Akshay Kumar Saxena, had told me cautiously, “We are merely taking this tiger as our guest. He obviously does not belong here.”
Saxena’s apprehensions, as it turned out a fortnight later, were not misplaced. Lonely in a strange land and with no prey animal in sight, this tiger died of starvation.
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A tale of two tigers
Of course, there have been happy endings too. Not all such journeys across unchartered territories lead to painful conclusions.
Meet Panna Lal. He got this rather unusual name after arriving at Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve. Till about last year, he remained a major attraction of the park. As you would have guessed, he had walked all the way from Panna Tiger Reserve, some 220 km away in the same state, and decided to make Bandhavgarh his new home.
Broken Tail was not so lucky. A highly charismatic tiger of Rajasthan’s Ranthambore, he was the favourite of photographers and wildlife lovers. Sometime in 2011, he disappeared without leaving a trace.
Broken Tail was found out a year later in Darrah, some 270 km away. Rather, his lifeless body was discovered. Apparently, he was run over by a passing train.
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Why the dangerous trek?
So, what inspires a tiger to undertake these long and dangerous journeys, away from their trusted forests and prey-bases?
True, a tiger that loses its territory to a stronger male or female is pushed out of its turf, but it mostly remains on the fringes of its erstwhile home turf. There have been several recorded cases of these defeated tigers surviving in the buffer zones of the forests. They never venture too far from their comfort zones.
Another theory was proposed by Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist of the last century—that of “racial memory”. Essentially, it implies transmission of stored memories, impressions and tendencies from one generation of species to another.
Who knows for sure if a tiger’s impulse to wander away doesn’t get triggered by a similar journey undertaken by his great-great grandfather? Science does not know everything. Not yet, thankfully.
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The homesick tiger
At times, homesickness plays a pivotal role in a tiger embarking upon a long journey. A well-documented example is T-3, a male translocated from Madhya Pradesh’s Pench Tiger Reserve to Panna in 2009 after the latter lost all its tigers to poachers. Under an ambitious programme to repopulate Panna with tigers, T3 was among the first to land in the new place.
But soon T3 started exhibiting signs of home-sickness. One fine morning, it simply left Panna and started walking towards Pench, some 440 km away!
How to bring T3 back to Panna? A huge challenge lay before Rangaiah Sreenivasa Murthy, the field director of Panna under whose able stewardship the tiger population in the reserve eventually grew from zero to 32.
Fortunately, T3 had been radio-collared. Hundreds of forest staff were pressed into service to track the wandering tiger and monitor its movements. Dozens of villages, too, chipped in to make the tiger turn back. All kinds of ruse were resorted to, including spraying of a tigress’s urine in his path, to lure him back.
T3 eventually returned to Panna, mated with two females, T1 and T2, and brought the tiger reserve back to its former glory.
Another happy ending.
