Natural History
Big cat facts
G. ANANTHAKRISHNAN
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Mills puts recent tiger biology research to good use to lend perspective and authority to his own field studies.
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Tiger, Stephen Mills, BBC Books, 2005, p.xxx, £20 (special Indian price £10).
EVERY factual book on tigers is an enduring work. Too few scientific accounts of the life of tigers were written during the decades that they were hunted across much of Asia and, sadly, the world began to show a mature interest in these magnificent creatures only when their population was down to the last five thousand in the wild.
Tigers are alluring animals and stories about them always have a magnetic appeal. Until scientific evidence became available, the most famous tales centred invariably around man-eaters, narrated by the shikari or hunter-turned-conservationist.
Strong scientific base
This book by Stephen Mills, a writer, producer and cameraman who has made acclaimed TV films on tigers, belongs to a different variety and is distinguished by its strong scientific base. Mills puts recent tiger biology research to good use to lend perspective and authority to his own field studies of the big cat. Tiger is thus a well-documented coffee-table-sized addition to available literature on the species, written in an accessible, conversational style and enlivened by large colourful photographs.
All tiger fans are familiar with its love for meat on hoof. Mills has culled a great deal of data to show which ungulates form its preferred diet — chital, sambar, nilgai and barasingha, and in some forests, gaur. The story gets even more interesting when he talks about the less widely known aspects of its diet: that a tiger occasionally eats grass and even fine, black micaceous soil, which, the author speculates, aids digestion. Such scientific study is based almost entirely on the study of faeces.
There is a strong myth surrounding the tiger's penis, and this is explained in the chapter, Courtship and Mating. Due to a purely biological function, a tigress in oestrus goes through an intensive mating cycle that requires, as research indicates, copulation every 15 minutes resulting in 50 or 60 encounters over a couple of days. "It is not surprising," muses Mills, "that the Sanskrit word for tiger is viagra and that foolish humans have set such store by the `medicinal' value of tiger penises".
Infanticide among tigers is discussed at some length in the succeeding chapter, Family Life: The First Months. Male tigers kill alien cubs because, it would seem from a genetic standpoint, they want to eliminate the genes of some other male and establish their own; the time available to them to sire offspring in the normal course is short, as the average male survives as a breeder for only 33 months and females will not be ready to mate until their cubs can fend for themselves. Yet, despite their reputation of acting pitilessly, male tigers play a "father" role when it comes to their own cubs, in the multiple families that they create in their range, says Mills, quoting from the ongoing work of scientist Raghu Chundawat in Central India.
Barring a minor error where he confuses Republic Day with Independence Day, Mills' book is vastly useful in learning tiger facts. The detail comes partly from landmark studies carried out in South Asia's best-known reserves — Chitwan in Nepal by the Smithsonian Tiger Ecology Project; Nagarhole in Karnataka by Ullas Karanth; Panna by Raghu Chundawat; Ranthambore by Valmik Thapar, and in Kaziranga, Kanha, the Sundarbans and other sites.
The book explores the chilling phenomenon of "man-eating", with the author proposing a theory on the uncommon circumstances under which a tiger would attack humans. In the cat's view, he says, a man on his feet is likely to appear much taller than six feet because of its visual perspective, and equally disconcerting, he would have no "back" — such as that of a deer or bison. The back is the anatomical area that a tiger normally attacks, and because there is none, it shies away from people. The contrast is provided, Mills thinks, by a crouching human. He not only presents a back, he appears as small as a deer and is therefore a viable target. The chapter, Man on the Menu, has data to show that many crouching humans have fallen victim.
Little interest in humans
The larger picture, however, shows that tigers generally have little interest in humans, and most individuals that have killed are ageing or injured cats. Contrary to the hunter's wisdom (including Corbett), shooting down tigers did little to arrest attacks or man-eating. It may have, sadly, achieved the opposite effect by exacerbating instability and provoking more attacks.
Arguably, the most important contribution made by Tiger to India's high-powered conservation effort is to uphold the value of science. Mills, who worked on "Land of the Tiger" for the BBC, digs out data from studies by Ullas Karanth to show that Project Tiger's pugmark census methods may be woefully inaccurate: six wildlife managers were shown pugmark prints from just four tigers and asked to calculate how many there were. The shocking results ranged from 24 tigers to six, and one respondent declined to hazard a guess. There is another sad truth to contend with: Project Tiger envisaged a scientist working in each reserve, but even after three decades, that has not happened.
Finally, there are the policy questions. Will politicians spare the habitat of the tiger, which hides minerals, metal ores and diamonds, and stop giving clearances to "development" projects? Can tiger reserves be spared from "sustainable use", a politically correct but environmentally damaging policy? There are no clear answers. On the other hand, Mills is a votary of eco-tourism where it directly benefits local communities.
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