Tiger And Bear Fight It Out At An Indian National Park [Video]
A viral video from a national park in Maharashtra, India, shows an adult tiger and a bear fighting it off. The video was captured during a safari on Wednesday at the Tadoba National Park.
Who came out as victorious might surprise you.
Akshay Kumar, the chief naturalist at Bamboo Forest Safari Lodge, was leading the safari when the tourists with him noticed the scene. Kumar immediately began filming the enthralling encounter between the two fearsome animals. He even recognized the tiger as being the 7-year-old dominant male of the area, named as Matkasur by the park officials. The water body where the tiger vs. bear face-off took place is called Jamun Bodi, NDTV reports.
According to Kumar, the fight initiated when the mother sloth bear came to the water body with her young cub, where the tiger had been cooling off. The video begins with the tiger chasing the bear away. Although sloth bears are not known to be territorial and are known to avoid confrontations, in this particular case, the mama bear’s maternal instinct takes over, and she begins fighting back. A vicious battle ensues, with the tiger initially trying to pin the bear down and the bear trying to escape its grips. As the fight progresses, both animals do damage to one another. Meanwhile, the distressed cub roars from a distance and runs away as it witnesses the violent scene unfold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcLgVm8MUds
“The tiger attacked the bear more than five minutes. It went after the sloth bear but she kept charging in order to protect her cub. It went on for 15 minutes. The tiger was roaring. It was a severe fight.”
While it would be expected that the sloth bear would be easy game to the bigger and more powerful Bengal tiger, according to Akshay Kumar, what saved the bear was her thick fur, which made it difficult for the tiger to get a clear grip. In fact, in the end the mama bear came off as victorious, chasing the tiger running away from the scene. This video has since gone viral on social media.
“Sloth bears are easy game. As you can see in the video, the sloth bear was so exhausted. They can’t outrun tigers. The only thing that saves the bear is the hair on the body, because tiger doesn’t get a grip.”
In Tadoba National Park, where temperatures are the highest during these months, water is scarce and animals are known to congregate to common water holes. Although incidents such as this must be fairly common during this season, this is the first time such an incident has been captured on camera.
The Daily Mail article below features high definition photos of the show-off.
Astonishing battle between a bear and a tiger is caught on film https://t.co/lDxrZRzTuh
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 2, 2018
