50 Fun Facts About Bengal Tiger

What did Sundarbans villagers wear on the backs of their heads in the 1980s to deter tigers attacking from behind?

Face masks relied on the idea that the cats rarely strike prey that is watching them, though the trick faded as tigers reportedly caught on.

In Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi, what is the name of the Bengal tiger stranded on the lifeboat?

Richard Parker got his human name through a clerical error that swapped the cub's name with that of the hunter who captured him.

White Bengal tigers, most often reported from the former state of Rewa, owe their pale coats to what?

A recessive gene has to come from both parents to turn a cub white, which is why zoos inbred the cats and why some captive ones are cross-eyed.

Tigers of the Sundarbans delta on the Bay of Bengal are the only ones in the world living among which trees?

Mangroves force these tigers to swim between islands to hunt, and their droppings show a menu that stretches to fish and crabs.

Which body part of the Bengal tiger, described as exceptionally stout, is the longest found in any living cat?

Canine teeth let a tiger clamp onto the throat of large prey and hold on until the animal suffocates, out of reach of horns and hooves.

Which Hollywood actor joined WWF in 2010 to launch Save Tigers Now, a campaign to double wild tiger numbers?

Leonardo DiCaprio backed a drive that began in 12 WWF priority landscapes and set 2022 as its deadline for twice as many wild tigers.

Like human fingerprints, which feature is uniquely patterned on every individual Bengal tiger?

Stripes run mostly vertically on a tiger's body but horizontally on its limbs and forehead, and no two cats wear the same pattern.

Which Las Vegas magic duo built a famous act around white tigers until an on-stage attack in 2003?

Siegfried & Roy headlined at The Mirage from 1990 until a white tiger named Mantacore bit Roy Horn's neck and dragged him offstage.

Who raises Bengal tiger cubs, which stay with the family group for two to three years?

The mother alone feeds and guards the cubs, carrying them one at a time by the scruff of the neck when a den no longer feels safe.

Which comedian played the title animal in the 2011 Broadway production of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo?

Robin Williams made it his only Broadway play, speaking as a tiger whose ghost roams wartime Baghdad after a soldier shoots it.

Machli, the famous tigress of India's Ranthambore National Park, earned a nickname for killing which reptile in 2003?

Crocodile Killer was one of several titles for Machli, considered the most photographed tigress in the world and honoured on an Indian stamp.

How do Bengal tigers, ambush hunters of forest and tall grassland, commonly cool off on hot days?

Soaking in water comes easily to a cat that swims strongly enough to cross rivers as wide as 8 km.

Bengal tiger cubs, weighing roughly a kilogram at birth, arrive in which helpless condition?

Eyes sealed shut at birth open after three to 14 days, and a cub needs a few more weeks before its vision is clear.

Which tiger body part, used in traditional Chinese medicine for at least a thousand years, drives much of the poaching?

Bones are prescribed as a muscle strengthener and a treatment for rheumatism, a demand that feeds smuggling networks running from India into China.

Which small prey animal often leaves tigers with crippling injuries that can turn them into man-eaters?

Porcupine quills and gunshot wounds were the main disabilities found in Terai man-eaters, cats too hobbled to catch their usual wild prey.

Which American university, nicknamed the Tigers, keeps a live tiger called Mike in a habitat beside its stadium?

LSU has kept a live mascot since 1936, by tradition a Bengal tiger, and the first was renamed after athletic trainer Mike Chambers.

Which director won an Oscar for Life of Pi, the 2012 film whose Bengal tiger was built by visual-effects artists?

Ang Lee's film won four Oscars, including Best Visual Effects for a studio that spent a year developing its digital tiger.

Which country outside Asia held more than 5,000 captive tigers in 2020, most of them outside accredited zoos?

United States zoos and other facilities approved by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums held only 6% of the country's captive tigers that year, as tigers had become popular exotic pets.

Which hunter shot the man-eating Champawat tigress in 1907 and later had India's first national park named after him?

Jim Corbett ended a run blamed for an estimated 436 deaths, then turned to cameras and promoted wildlife photography over trophy hunting.

Unlike the slit pupils of a domestic cat, the pupils of a Bengal tiger's eyes are which shape?

Round pupils widen when a tiger makes its 'defence threat' expression, a warning that also involves a wrinkled muzzle and pulled-back ears.

In the Sundarbans, most victims of opportunistic man-eating tigers were taken during the season for gathering what?

Honey gatherers push deep into the forest on foot, and the cats are thought to attack them as intruders on their territory.

In India's Kaziranga National Park, tigers killed 20 of which heavyweight herbivore, usually left alone, during 2007?

Rhinoceros kills are extraordinarily rare elsewhere, but Kaziranga holds the world's largest population of the Indian species alongside its tigers.

Which Hindu goddess, created by the gods to fight demons, is often shown riding a tiger?

Durga appears on a tiger in many images and on a lion in others, and Durga Puja, the festival in her honour, is a major annual celebration in Bengal.

Which rare colour form of the Bengal tiger has pale fur with red-brown markings in place of the usual black?

Golden tigers, also called golden tabbies, are so rare that every captive one seems to trace back to a single white male called Bhim.

Which genus, whose members include the lion, leopard and jaguar, does the Bengal tiger belong to?

Panthera cats share a specially adapted larynx with large vocal folds, the equipment that lets a tiger roar.

Which ruler, called the Tiger of Mysore, owned a mechanical tiger shown mauling a European man?

Tipu Sultan's automaton hides a small pipe organ that imitates the victim's cries, and it now sits in London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

Which naturalist gave the tiger its first scientific name, Felis tigris, in a work published in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus's species is anchored to Bengal, its traditional type locality, so the Bengal tiger is the form all other tigers are measured against.

What is the friendly greeting sound called that tigers make by blowing air through the nostrils with the mouth closed?

Chuffing, known to scientists as prusten, is a soft, breathy snort that does the job purring does in smaller cats.

Which country nearly tripled its wild tigers between 2009 and 2022, beating a pledge to double them?

Nepal counted 121 tigers in 2009 and 355 in 2022, well past the doubling it promised at the Global Tiger Summit of 2010.

Which marking on the back of each ear do tigers flash at rivals during aggressive encounters?

A white spot ringed with black sits behind each ear, and tigresses and their cubs also turn their ears to show the marks to one another.

In which Himalayan country was a tiger recorded at 4,200 metres, the highest altitude on record for any tiger?

Bhutan's record came from Jigme Dorji National Park in 2008, and tigers have been documented in 17 of the kingdom's 18 districts.

Which term names the tiger footprints that India's 20th-century censuses used to tell individual cats apart?

Pug marks proved an unreliable guide: when camera traps replaced them for the 2007–2008 census, India's count came out at less than half the earlier claim.

Which large Asian deer, the Bengal tiger's favourite prey, is the cat said to lure by mimicking its call?

Sambar can supply up to nearly 45% of the biomass that Bengal tigers consume in India, and the deer is also the favourite prey of the Asiatic lion.

Which venomous snake has turned up in the stomachs of Sundarbans tigers, alongside fish, crabs and monitor lizards?

King cobra remains were found along with those of an Indian cobra, a water monitor and a rhesus macaque, a sign of how varied the diet is in the delta.

Which big cat, rather than the lion, is the tiger's sister species according to genetic analyses?

Snow leopard and tiger lineages split from each other between 2.7 and 3.7 million years ago, making the two cats each other's closest kin.

Which wild cattle species, the largest on Earth, turned up in almost half of tiger droppings studied at Nagarahole?

Gaur bulls can top 1,000 kg, yet tigers ambush even healthy ones, and a herd that notices the cat rings its calves until the hunt is abandoned.

Which British king's hunting party killed 39 tigers in about ten days during his 1911 visit to the Indian subcontinent?

George V reportedly claimed 21 of the 39 tigers himself, on a hunt held days after the Delhi Durbar marked his coronation as Emperor of India.

A tiger is among the wild animals carved on the Pashupati seal, a relic of which ancient civilisation?

Indus Valley carvers placed the tiger beside an elephant, a pairing set opposite two more wild beasts across a central human figure.

In which Russian city did a 2010 tiger summit create Global Tiger Day, now marked every 29 July?

Saint Petersburg's summit had Vladimir Putin behind it, a leader who made saving the Amur tiger his mission, and its day is also called International Tiger Day.

Which Indian financial institution's seal shows a tiger, chosen in place of the lion on the original design?

Reserve Bank of India planners first borrowed a lion from an East India Company coin, then swapped in the tiger, now India's national animal.

India has agreed to help reintroduce tigers to which country, where the cats were declared functionally extinct in 2016?

Cambodia's last wild tiger was caught on a camera trap in 2007, and the plan would bring Indian cats to the Cardamom Mountains.

In which African country did John Varty start Tiger Canyons, a disputed project to re-wild captive-bred tigers?

South Africa's project drew fire when investors said prey was chased into the cats' path for a film, and its four tigers proved to be crossbred.

Which Indian city's Alipore Zoo was the first in the country to breed tigers in captivity?

Kolkata's zoo later drew criticism from scientists for crossing its tigers with lions to produce hybrids such as tigons.

Which forest guardian, venerated by Hindus and Muslims alike in the Sundarbans, is asked for protection from tigers?

Bonbibi's arch-enemy in local legend is Dakshin Rai, a demon king who takes the form of a tiger to attack people entering the forest.

Which Rajasthan tiger reserve lost all its tigers to poachers by 2004 and was later restocked by helicopter?

Sariska received its first newcomer in June 2008, a male flown in from Ranthambore, and satellites helped track the relocated cats.

What was the name of the white tiger captured in Rewa in 1951, the ancestor of many white tigers in zoos?

Mohan was caught by the king of Rewa, Martand Singh, lived to almost 20, and left offspring that stocked zoos around the world.

Which South Indian dynasty used a tiger crest as the emblem on its coins?

Chola coins that pair the tiger with a fish and a bow advertise supremacy over the Pandya and Chera dynasties, whose emblems those were.

Which English city's museum has displayed a huge mounted Bengal tiger, shot in 1860, for over 150 years?

Leeds received the mounted tiger in 1863 after its skin was shown at the 1862 International Exhibition, and tales of a dangerous past grew around it.

In Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Mowgli kills the tiger villain by stampeding a herd of which animals?

Buffalo that Mowgli was put to work herding are driven through a narrow canyon, with the wolves Akela and Grey Brother helping to trap the tiger.

The name of the tiger in Life of Pi was inspired by a character in an 1838 sea novel by which author?

Edgar Allan Poe's mutineer is cannibalised after a shipwreck, in a story that also features a dog named Tiger.