Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 590 pages of information about Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore.

Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 590 pages of information about Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore.

I have often found in conversation that people are surprised to find that tigers eat tigers when a suitable opportunity for doing so presents itself, but considering that man still, in some parts of the world, eats his fellow man, it seems to me extremely natural that a tiger should eat a tiger.  I have, however, only met with one instance which occurred in my neighbourhood, and in this case I am strongly inclined to think that the eaten tiger was first of all killed.  The incident occurred in this way.  Shortly before my arrival in India one winter, my manager wounded a tiger, but I do not think very severely, as the tiger not only travelled at least two miles, but ascended a mountain up to a considerable elevation.  Along one side of the mountain is a rather long strip of forest, which is a favourite place for tigers either to pass through or lie up in, as it is quite out of any village-to-village route, and had the tiger been hard hit he would certainly have remained there.  But not only did he not do so, but skirting the jungle, or passing through it, he climbed up a steep ascent, evidently with the view of going into the next valley, and near the top of the ascent his living history ends.  Knowing from the direction taken by the wounded tiger that he would probably be in the jungle on the mountain side, my manager had it beaten on the day following, when a tiger came out which he took to be the wounded tiger, and which he killed.  It then turned out that it was not the wounded tiger, but a fresh tiger with the wounded tiger, or nearly all the meat of it, inside him, and all that was recovered was the head and the skin of the chest, which I saw after my arrival, and which was sent in to Government for the reward, and by the size of the head it must have been a fine tiger.  When I visited the jungle in 1891, I carefully cross-examined the natives in the matter, and they said that they could not say whether the tiger had died from wounds or whether he had been killed by the tiger that had carried off and eaten the body, but they were positive that it was a tiger that had eaten the body, from the tracks, for the body had been taken down to water, on the margin of which no other tracks but those of a tiger were visible, and these were clearly defined.  They could also be distinctly traced from the place in the open grassland whence the body was carried.  Taking all the circumstances into consideration—­the distance travelled, the steepness of the ground, and the fact that the tiger passed a favourable jungle for lying in, I am strongly of opinion, in fact, I consider it almost certain, that the wounded tiger must have been dispatched by the other tiger, which was hungry and could not resist the smell of the blood.  There is nothing remarkable in a tiger eating a tiger found dead, and I have read and heard of instances of this, and also of tigers fighting, and the vanquished tiger being eaten.

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Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.