Tiger attack
Some also recommend not riding a bicycle, or running in a region where tigers live, so as not to provoke their instinct to chase.
[4] Many human fatalities and injuries are due to incidents at zoos, or to the man-eating tigers in certain parts of South Asia.
This is usually due to a tiger being incapacitated by a gunshot wound or porcupine quills, or some other factors, such as health issues and disabilities.
In such cases, the animal's inability to hunt traditional prey forces it to stalk humans, which are less appetizing but generally much easier to chase, overpower, and kill.
This was the case with the man-eating tigress of Champawat, which was believed to have begun eating villagers at least partially in response to crippling tooth injuries.
[6] Man-eating tigers have been a recurrent problem in India, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal.
[7] According to various sources, cases of man-eating tigers in the Russian Far East were always rare or not recorded at all over long periods.
Invariably, it will only attack a solitary person, and that too, after prolonged and painstaking stalking, having assured itself that no other human being is in the immediate vicinity...
In one case, a post-mortem examination of a killed tigress revealed two broken canine teeth, four missing incisors, and a loose upper molar, handicaps which would make capturing stronger prey extremely difficult.
[11] The Bengal tigers of the Sundarbans, bordering India and Bangladesh, used to regularly kill fifty or sixty people a year.
[13] The kill rate has dropped significantly due to better management techniques and now only about three people lose their lives each year.
[citation needed] Despite the notoriety associated with this area, humans are only a supplement to the tigers' diet; they do not provide a primary food source.
[10] The Tigers of Chowgarh were a pair of man-eating Bengal tigers, consisting of an old tigress and her sub-adult cub, which for over a five-year period killed a reported 64 people in eastern Kumaon Division of Uttarakhand in Northern India over an area spanning 1,500 square miles (3,900 km2).
The figures however are uncertain, as the natives of the areas the tigers frequented claimed double that number, and they do not take into account victims who survived direct attacks but died subsequently.
[citation needed] A story was discovered by Pune-based author Sureshchandra Warghade when he ran into an old villager in the Bhimashankar forest which lies near Pune.
The villager explained to the author how a man-eating tiger terrorized the entire Bhimashakar area during a span of two years in the 1940s.
During this time the tiger supposedly killed more than 100 people, but it was apparently very careful to avoid discovery; only two bodies were ever found.
The authenticity of the story told by the villager was confirmed when Warghade examined official reports, including a certificate given by the British authorities for killing the man-eating tiger.
[16] While the Sundarbans are particularly well known for tiger attacks, Dudhwa National Park also had several man-eaters in the late 1970s, with 32 people killed over a period of four years in the Kheri region of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
The first death was on 2 March 1978 when a Forest Corporation of Satiana employee, identified in the press as Akbar, was attacked while taking a bathroom break.
Conservationist Billy Arjan Singh had taken the British-born cat from Twycross Zoo and raised her in India, with the goal of releasing her back into the wild.
Experts felt that Tara would not have the required skills and correct hunting techniques to survive in the wild and controversy surrounded the project.
Singh also joined the hunt with the intent of identifying the man-eater, but firm confirmation of the identity of the tiger was never found.
These attacks generally occur during the monsoon season when the locals enter the reserve to collect grass.
[25] The hunt for the tigress included more than 100 camera traps, bait in the form of horses and goats tied to trees, round-the-clock surveillance from treetop platforms and armed patrols.
[26] Wildlife officials also brought in bottles of the perfume Obsession for Men by Calvin Klein, which contains a pheromone called civetone, after an experiment in the US suggested that it could be used to attract jaguars.
