To protect herself and her cubs, a tigress finds shelter in dens where visibility from the outside is low. This is important because the young tiger cubs must be left alone while their mother is hunting. By about eight months, the tiger cubs can follow their mother on hunts and learn the tricks of the trade.
Once they are around two years old, tiger cubs become independent of their mother. Males roam further from their mother's territory than females and eventually establish their own territory once they reach full maturity.
Resources:
Pictures:
http://www.deviantart.com/download/61945407/white_tiger_cubs_by_buggy12.jpg
http://awtlblog.vitsco.com/wp-content/uploads/2003/10/Sumatran-Tiger-Cubs.jpg
A tiger mother usually only having two tiger cubs, no matter how many she has to begin with reminds me of Dawkins' parental investment theory. There are only so many resources a parent can invest and if there is a runt in a litter of three, sadly, it might be more beneficial for the mother to invest her limited resources into the two stronger cubs even though each cub has half of her genes. Dawkins' ideas about an organism being a survival machine with the main goal of propagating as much of its genetic material into the environment as possible explains many behaviors in the animal kingdom that may seem strange when people think about how they behave towards offspring.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many cubs tigers have in the initial litter? This is interesting because I wonder if it is because of their solitary lifestyle that they do not have that many cubs. If they were in a pride like lions, they would have more than enough females to hunt as well as watch the cubs. Also, do most of the cubs die of starvation because the mother cannot feed them all or is it because of predators (when the mother leaves or they wander too far)?
ReplyDeleteTiger cubs are some of the cutest. I think its neat that the tiger cubs can be either white or orange. Its also amazing that at only 8 months they start learning how to hunt with their mothers.
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