18-4-2024 PANNA TIGER RESERVE, INDIA - BENGAL TIGER (FEMALE) (Panthera tigris)

The tiger is a carnivore and prefers hunting large ungulates such as gaur, sambar, chital, barasingha, water buffalo, nilgai, serow and takin. Medium-sized prey includes wild boar, Indian hog deer, Indian muntjac and northern plains gray langur. Small prey such as porcupine, hare and peafowl form a small part of its diet. Because of the encroachment of humans into tiger habitat, it also preys on domestic livestock.

Bengal tigers occasionally hunt and kill predators such as Indian leopard, mugger crocodile, Asian black bear, sloth bear, and dhole. They generally do not attack adult Indian elephant and Indian rhinoceros, but such extraordinarily rare events have been recorded. In Kaziranga National Park, tigers killed 20 rhinoceros in 2007. In 2011 and 2014, two instances of Bengal tigers killing adult elephants were recorded; in Jim Corbett National Park on a 20-year-old elephant cow, and another on a 28-year-old sick elephant in Kaziranga National Park; the latter was eaten by several tigers at once. A king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), an Indian cobra (Naja naja), Asian water monitor, rhesus macaque, fish, crabs, and very rarely fishing cats and turtles were found in the stomachs and scat of tigers in the Sundarbans.