NATURE
PROTECTING THE KILLERS
E lots of noise before slowly backing away. And don’t ever turn your back on the cat. If you follow these simple rules, the tiger will hopefully decide that it’s not worth its while to attack. Hopefully. But why do some tigers hunt people anyway? What makes a big cat become a man-eater? I comfort myself with the knowledge that several thousand workers are in this huge forest at any one time, so given the number of fatalities each year, the odds on me meeting my maker are slim. In fact, with unpublished research putting the number of tigers in the Sundarbans at 335–500, you might expect many more attacks. But, like most other animals, the vast majority of tigers have a well-deserved fear of the world’s top predator – us. Tigers generally melt into the forest when they hear people approaching, although if pushed they will defend themselves – a case in point being when a
cornered tigress protects her cubs. But this is very much the exception and it seems harsh to label a tigress doing her maternal duty a man-eater. Yet in the Sundarbans there are also cases of unprovoked attacks, instances where fishermen have been noisily chopping wood for 20 minutes when, out of the blue, a tiger turns up and attacks someone. If this wasn’t bad enough, the cat might then go on to eat the body. This is the nightmare scenario – a tiger actively hunting people. The making of a man-eater Nobody knows for sure why this happens, though there is a lot of speculation. Some believe it is due to a shortage of natural prey, although there are enough deer in the forest and too few people are killed for these cats to be living on human flesh alone. Others think that the troublemakers are old or injured individuals that
I make it back to the boat, feeling relief as I pull myself up on deck. I look over my shoulder... THE TIGER RESPONSE TEAM
TIM LAMAN X3, GETTY, MATTHEW MARAN/NATUREPL.COM
A job with the Sundarbans tiger response team could be one of the most dangerous in conservation. Team members are tasked with retrieving people’s bodies from the jaws of tigers. The cats usually drag their victims into the forest, so the group is at hand to help relatives recover the remains so that a proper burial can take place. Tigers kill one person every 7-10 days in the Sundarbans, so the team is constantly on call. It regularly patrols high-risk areas, warning forest workers to stay away in order to avoid incidents in the first place. Members also provide first aid and transport injured survivors to hospital, a trip that might otherwise take several days in the villagers’ small, hand-paddled boats.
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Vol.3 Issue 1
A spotted deer, a favourite prey of the tigers, grazes among the spiky mangrove roots
are unable to catch their normal quarry, but young and fit animals can also display this behaviour. Another, more chilling, idea pervades – that some tigers acquire a taste for human flesh. We could spend a lot of time and money attempting to work out what causes a tiger to hunt people, but there’s a high chance that any fi ndings would be inconclusive. Also, some of the necessary experiments would be unethical, to put it mildly. After all, how do you go about testing whether a tiger prefers human flesh? Meanwhile, the people of the Sundarbans don’t have the luxury of time. As each week passes, someone else dies. So, to begin with, the project’s aim is simply to alleviate the immediate human misery. The tiger response team investigates ‘pugmarks’ and (inset) team leader Goni on duty