BILLY ARJAN SINGH’S TIGER BOOK

Arjan Singh

Description

Tara had now been out of my care for nearly a year and it was becoming increasingly difficult to recognize her pugmarks. It was therefore essential to get a photograph which would prove beyond doubt that the tigress in the neighbourhood was indeed the one that I had reared at Tiger Haven. The stripe pattern in tiger’s changes with growth and age but the cheek stripes and the eye spots, though asymmetrical, are immutable.
This is an anthology on the tiger in India. The contributors come from various walks of life (conservation, wildlife, ecology, photography and film-making) bound by a common interest in the tiger. Jim Corbett was a hunter turned conservationist who edited India’s first magazine on the subject; his ‘Chowgarh Tigers’ is the sole hunting story written in a different age of changing circumstances by a man who forsaw the possible extinction of the tiger, but reacted violently because of the involvement of the human element. Nicholas Courtney is a writer, broadcaster and documentary film-maker. Valmik Thapar is a photographer, documentary film-maker and writer. Fiona Sunquist is a wildlife writer and photographer. Mel Sunquist is a wildlife ecologist. In the modern context the extinction of this glamourous cat is a spectre that haunts all of us. The magnitude of this loss will make itself felt only when the species is in limbo. It behoves civilised humanity to ensure the tiger’s survival, and the great forests he needs to live in, and of which he is the symbol.

Sujets

• Environmental Protection
• Environmental Conservation
• Juvenile Nonfiction
• Film director
• Billy Arjan Singh
• Valmik Thapar
• Nicholas Courtney
• Anthology
• Wildlife
• Tiger
• Photography
• Ecology
• Nonfiction
• Hunting
• Jim Corbett
• Conservation
• Nature
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 1998
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788194597353
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

This is an anthology on the tiger in India. The contributors come from various walks of life (conservation, wildlife, ecology, photography and film-making) bound by a common interest in the tiger. Jim Corbett was a hunter turned conservationist who edited India’s first magazine on the subject; his ‘Chowgarh Tigers’ is the sole hunting story written in a different age of changing circumstances by a man who forsaw the possible extinction of the tiger, but reacted violently because of the involvement of the human element. Nicholas Courtney is a writer, broadcaster and documentary film-maker. Valmik Thapar is a photographer, documentary film-maker and writer. Fiona Sunquist is a wildlife writer and photographer. Mel Sunquist is a wildlife ecologist. In the modern context the extinction of this glamourous cat is a spectre that haunts all of us. The magnitude of this loss will make itself felt only when the species is in limbo. It behoves civilised humanity to ensure the tiger’s survival, and the great forests he needs to live in, and of which he is the symbol.
Arjan Singh (1917–2010) in his activities has spanned both eras of Hunting and Conservation. From his farm, Tiger Haven, in Uttar Pradesh, where he stayed from 1959 to 2010, he extensively studied the varied wildlife of the area, and reared and successfully returned to the wild, a tigress and two leopards. A spokesman for the tiger, he waged many a crusade against environmental destruction. In recognition of his field work, he was awarded the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal in the year 1976.
 
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Copyright © Arjan Singh: Introduction and all signed pieces. 2020
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Photographs: Kailash Sankhala
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To
Jim Corbett
The First Conservationist
 

 
Contents
I NTRODUCTION
1. T HE C HOWGARH T IGERS
Jim Corbett
2. M ATURING S ENSES
Arjan Singh
3. A W ILD T IGRESS
Arjan Singh
4. T HERE IS A R AGING T IGER I NSIDE E VERY M AN
Nicholas Courtney
5. P ADMINI
Valmik Thapar
6. S PLAY T OES —A LMOST A M ANEATER
Arjan Singh
7. T HE M AULING
Fiona Sunquist & Mel Sunquist
 

 
Introduction
C ats are predators, all of them hunters, stalkers, climbers, takers. There is no value judgement in that. To judge the cat because it takes its prey is to question the wisdom of the blackbird and to despise the purple mattin for its meal near a picnic site. You cannot judge a fragment of nature. You cannot use wisdom like surgery to extract and judge, lift free of its matrix any small shard of life, and nod at it in approval or disapproval. That is not only arrogant, but foolish, in the opinion of Roger Caras.
There is only one view of the natural world. A world view or a cosmic one, and since we are part of it we must never forget to judge ourselves as well. Our appetite is no kinder to the world around us than that of the cats, no gentler, no less demanding. There is nothing wrong with sentimentality, nothing at all wrong with a gentle appreciation of beauty, but in that hour when the body must be served, sentimentality is a poor judge of protein. With eyes half closed, with a grinding and unrelenting inner hunger to be sated, we eat what we must and so does the cat. And then we sleep and so does the cat. We do not design the plan, but we live it and that is true of the cat too. But that is the only parallel.
The cat goes where he thinks his prey will be, and then the stalk begins. It is parry and thrust, at a distance safe for one, but maybe not for the other. Two intelligences lock, dance and manoeuvre: one lives and the cat is a living thing. Nature in all its complexity is coming alive.
The evolutionary history of the 36 modern cats both large and small is traced back to a rather small, insectivorous mammal early in the Cenozoic era, roughly about 65 million years ago. The earliest representatives of the carnivora found as fossils and classified as miacid are already morphologically separable into two distinct lineages, namely; the verines and the miacines. Members of both lineages however display the dental features of carnivores, that is shearing teeth and a specialized jaw joint.
Members of the miacids were small mammals, rather like the civets today. They had relatively small brains and many primitive features in the skull. It is likely that they were forest dwellers and hence were rarely fossilized. However fossilized remains of some members of both lineages have been found in rocks deposited some 40 million years ago. Later the modern group of carnivores apparently developed in a burst of diversification. The reasons for this proliferation are however not clear and it is suggested the that radiation among the carnivores occurred in response to a diversification in prey species, which in turn was stimulated by radiation in plants.
During the subsequent diversification some similarities on morphology and life styles developed such that, some parallels could be drawn between each group, as well as a wider diversification which establishes that the modern great cats have not essentially descended from the sabre tooths. The tiger, closer to the true cat than the taller lion is the largest of the great cats. Although lacking the phantom qualities of the quintessential cat the leopard, the tiger is the largest feline alive. The extant record of the Siberian tiger shot in the Sikhote Alin Mountains of Russia in 1953, weighing 855 lbs, is unlikely to be surpassed. Though comparable in size to the lion, their girth of limb is much greater. The Maharajah Jodh Shamsher Jung, in Nepal shot a tiger in the year 1934 which was found to weigh 705 lbs.
Though essentially solitary, this condition may be partially influenced by the habitat and prey availability conditions for as many as seven tigers have been found sharing a large prey. Tolerance, especially among related females is similar to the genesis of the lion pride, where the main fluctuations among prides are the dominant males who control territorial rights and resident lionesses, depending for their status on the balance of power. Familial coexistence in the case of the tiger, depends on the density of the prey species and tolerance in the solitary tiger. For intolerance increases with population getting out of control and ultimately as with humans, a free-for-all is triggered off by unlimited competition.
The origin of the tiger was at first credited to the Chigar caves of Northern Siberia, but now supported by scientific opinion it is believed that they may have had their genesis in Southern China. From there driven by the Ice Ages, population expansions and search for new prey, they moved south and southwest towards Indo–China, Sumatra, Bali, Java, India, Burma and the Caspian mainland. Now in another racial f