As we all know, in modern cats, only lions are truly social animals, although a growing body of research shows that the line between living alone and living in groups is blurred.
Such as Eurasian lynx, cheetah, mountain lion and other traditional solitary animals, is not as lonely as people think, and even there will be a temporary cluster phenomenon, but it is undeniable that tigers are highly solitary species in the cat family, in addition to the male and female tigers paired in estrus, and the female tiger family in the breeding stage, people rarely find that wild tigers are more than one acting together.
For women, pregnancy is a big thing, especially after the second trimester, it will have a major impact on daily life, causing many inconveniences, and in the third trimester, even squatting is more difficult, let alone doing some larger movements, at this time, the other half often has to take on the responsibility of taking care of her.
Tigers are solitary animals, relying on hunting for food, but the male tiger left after the tigress was conceived, and will not give the tigress any substantial help in the subsequent production and child-rearing process, so how does the pregnant tigress solve the food problem?
Most predators in the world have "overkill" behavior, which simply means that they know that they will not finish eating, and they will kill as many prey as possible. For example, the golden leopard that went down the mountain and broke into the village bit and killed more than 100 chickens; the snow leopard that broke into the sheep pen killed several sheep in a row.
For predators such as tigers and leopards, hunting is their nature and their main source of food, so whenever they have the opportunity, they will catch as much prey as possible and be prepared.
In fact, early humans lived a life of gathering and hunting before entering the agricultural society, and men went into the mountains to hunt and caught as much prey as possible.
The behavior of "overkilling" is often closely related to the habit of hiding food, hunting excessive prey, one meal or even several meals can not be eaten, so predators will hide excess food to find out and eat when food is scarce in the future.
The animal's hiding behavior is greatly affected by the environment, to be precise, it is greatly affected by the pressure of "scavengers", such as the African grassland ecosystem, there are a large number of "scavengers" such as hyenas and vultures, and their ability to find carrion is very outstanding, so the predators who live here, such as lions, rarely hide food, and they are more inclined to eat as much as they catch.
In the Asian forest ecology, tigers face less "scavenger" pressure, so they can safely hide excess food.
For the tigress, before the third trimester, when she still has strong hunting ability, it is a good idea to hide the excess prey for later consumption.
Tigers are thermostatic animals, must continue to eat to maintain the body's energy supply, so in order not to let pregnancy affect their own hunting, they in the long process of species evolution, the pregnancy period is very short, only about 3 and a half months, will not be pregnant in October like humans.
And for most of the entire pregnancy, it is almost infertile, and before the third trimester, it is not even possible to see whether it is pregnant, and at this stage, the tigress still retains a high hunting ability.
In the third trimester, the tigress's belly will gradually bulge into a pregnant state, but at this time it still has not lost the ability to hunt.
Tigers are a species that hunts in ambushes, and even in the third trimester, the tigress's hunting ability declines, but she can catch some prey through ambushes.
It is only in the last 3-5 days of production that it will be temporarily incapacitated, and for the tigress at this time, the most important thing to do is to find a safe shelter with many prey around it to prepare for the upcoming production.
Tigers do not have fixed nests, and places such as daily grass, under large trees, rock crevices and other places can become their resting places, and only tigresses who are about to give birth and during childbearing will have a fixed nest.
For tigers, in these 3-5 days, they can eat hidden food, even if they are hungry for three or five days, there is not much problem.
Most of the world's carnivores, according to the way of their food acquisition, can be roughly divided into "predators" and "scavengers", food sources are mostly obtained by hunting, called "predators", scavengers with high scavenger properties, called "scavengers".
Since the evolution of species, almost all predators have opportunism, that is, they can eat scavengers, so the boundary between "predators" and "scavengers" is very blurred, "predators" can eat scavenging, and "scavengers" can hunt.
Many people think that after the tigress becomes pregnant, her hunting ability declines, and she will meet the needs of daily life by picking up carrion meat.
Although tigers are the top predators in nature, according to the study of Indian Bengal tigers, it is found that on weekdays, they mostly feed on medium-sized ungulates, and when it is not necessary, they will try to avoid preying on larger and stronger prey such as bison and sloth bears, because for solitary predators, it is very taboo to be injured, because once injured, it means that the hunting ability is reduced, which is likely to affect the next survival.
However, once the tigress becomes pregnant, there will be some small changes in feeding habits, and the hunting concept will be more radical, which will increase the proportion of prey and is no longer as conservative as before.
For example, the Bengal tiger in Kanha National Park, on average, bison account for 2.8% of its diet, but for pregnant tigresses, this proportion will rise to about 8.2%, and the proportion of female tigers in childbearing will be higher.
In fact, it is not difficult to understand that for a pregnant tigress, it must prepare for the next stage of pregnancy and childbearing, and ensure the food supply as much as possible. Instead of consuming more energy to frequently hunt small and medium-sized prey, it is better to hunt large prey directly at a higher cost-effective price, so that the efficiency can be increased at the same time, and there will be more surplus food to hide.
Overall, the impact of pregnancy on tigers' access to food cannot be said to be nothing, but it will not be large, and it can easily cope with this problem by using the above three strategies.
The tigress, the lioness, and the gray wolf have all done their best to raise a baby