Tigers employ a variety of methods to maintain exclusive rights to their home range. Urine, mixed with anal gland secretions, is sprayed onto trees, bushes and rocks along trails, and fences and scraps are left in conspicuous places throughout the area. Scratching trees may also serve to signpost. These chemical and visual signals convey much information to neighboring animals, which probably come to know each other by smell. Males can learn the reproductive condition of females, and intruding animals are informed of the resident's presence, thus reducing the possibility of direct physical conflict and injury, which the solitary tiger cannot afford as it depends on its own physical health to obtain food. The importance of marking was evident in the Nepal study, when tigers which failed to visit a portion of their home range to deposit these "occupied" signals (either due to death or confinement with young) lost the area in three to four weeks to neighboring animals. This indicates that boundaries are continually probed and checked and that tigers occupying adjacent ranges are very much aware of each others presence. The long-term exclusive use of a home range confers considerable advantages on the occupant. For a female, familiarity with an area is important, as she must kill prey with some regularity to raise young. When the young are small and unable to follow she must obtain food from a small area, as she has to return to suckle them at regular intervals. Later, when her young are larger and growing rapidly she must be able to find and kill enough prey to feed herself and the young. Territorial advantages for male seem to be different; they maintain ranges three or four times larger than those of females, so food is not likely to be the critical factor. What matters is access to females and paternity of cubs. Males are not directly involved in the rearing of young. Although there is not as much evidence as for lions, several instances have been reported of male tigers killing cubs. These are usually associated with the acquisition of one male's home range by another. By killing the offspring of the previous male, incoming male ensures that females in his newly acquired range come into heat and bear his offspring. Tigers living in areas of prime habitat raise more young than can find openings, so large numbers of animals, usually young adults, live on the periphery. There is no clear picture of the social organization in these marginal areas, but ranges are certainly larger and probably overlapping, and there is little successful reproduction. This outlying segment of the population is important, as it promotes genetic mixing in the breeding population and ensures that there are enough individuals to fill any vacancies that may arise. Unfortunately, it is usually these tigers that come into conflict with humans, as the habitat they occupy is, more often than not, heavily exploited by man and his livestock.
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Sunday, March 20, 2016