The Leap of Life…

Encountering a snake, especially in high grass is a peril that tigers live with regularly. In the plains of Central India, regular encounters have been recorded of tigers taking on pythons, cobras, vipers and others of the herp kind.

Tiger cubs, while curious, are also equally scared of the slithering beings; and beyond their first few encounters, curiosity clearly gives way to keeping their distance. One such incident occurred with a dominant tigress’ cubs, this time around, in our presence. 

Tigers follow patterns, clear patterns of approach when coming towards a water-body, or prowling their territory to ward off intruders or even finding a mate. In a certain waterhole, the cubs had a clear pattern of walking over a bund (a natural dam) before finding a specific clearing, through which they walked down the grassy path to the water to cool off. If observed closely when there, you will have noticed a faint pugdundee (trail) leading to the waterhole.

During this particular day, two of the cubs took this path to the waterhole without realising that a herp of some kind was resting in the path. Now, tigers with age skilfully hunt herps too. Herps clearly are not a preferred diet, but a hungry tiger won't stop at hunting a cobra or a python. These cubs though are too young to handle a herp by themselves. And hence, while they lazily walked down the path, both, at each time, were startled at the sight of a herp in their path suddenly. This made both do what any living being not so skilled at dealing with a herp do - jump over to avoid contact.

We unfortunately were not filming at this time and had switched to still photography and hence, could not capture the first instance of the cub almost tripping over and turning around dizzily to realise that it managed to avoid contact. Only when she realised she had successfully stayed away, did her stride gather the gait famously seen in these cats.

With age comes skill and with skill, these young tigers will learn to skilfully deal with any lurking danger that rests in their path, albeit with some high risks, as some incidents have witnessed. For now, these cubs carry on in the innocence of their adolescence, until the day one amongst them will challenge the others and maybe, the mother herself, for supremacy...

Life & death - peace & battle - supremacy & defeat, whichever the outcome, these grasslands shall be witness to much more than we ever know...

20 Mar 2022, Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, Umaria, Madhya Pradesh