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Comment by joshlegs | Hacker News Reader

> was fortunate to see a Tigress with fresh kill and couple of cubs.

also fortunate you werent the 'fresh kill'!

serious, though, in what kind of context is it possible to see an adult tigress and not totally crap your pants?

I had accompanied a wildlife photographer friend of mine along with a forest guard. There was a large crevice separating us and the den.

Prior permission is required from the authorities and they are very strict about handing them out and also they come with lot of restrictions, like the permit is restricted to a single zone of the forest and your entry/exit times are pre-defined and logged.

The tiger to be afraid of is the one stealthily stalking you because it's starving and looking for prey it doesn't usually go after.

One with a fresh kill isn't going to be very interested in you unless you come too close to it or its cubs.

I hear one way to tell you're being stalked by a predator is a sudden eerie silence, where all the birds etc. stop making noises.

Note to self next time I go backpacking in the Rockies.

Why would birds go silent when they see a tiger? They're not in danger. The only possible danger would be to their eggs/chicks in a nest and my experience there is they make noise when they perceive any possible intruder near their nests.

Jim Corbett was a Brit in India who had the job of hunting down a number of man-eating tigers, lived to tell about it, and wrote several books about it (recommended). He talks extensively about listening to the jungle as a tiger detection method - the monkeys freak out and call to warn each other about the predator, birds freak out and then disappear, etc. He paid attention to both unusual silences and unusual noises. There were still several occasions where he almost became tiger chow.

Are you sure. From my father and grandfather who have had to put down wild animals in the Indian jungle, I have heard the otherway round. Monkeys, dears and birds give characteristic warning calls when they see a tiger on the hunt.

There was a video circulating around a few weeks back of a guy on a bike riding through a forest when a tiger came charging towards him. Absolutely terror-inducing footage. Those things are FAST!

Are you talking about this?

https://youtu.be/CZwcZ-94wdo

That fella is lucky, looks like the tigress decided to cut her chase midway, else with that speed, the cameraman was a goner.

Yup! Couldn't find the link somehow.

Don't think the tigress cut the chase midway. Rather, the sudden change of surface from forest to tarmac affected her grip.

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