Nutriment
Approach of a civilization to the woods and to their wild inhabitants compelled tigers to attack in India herds of a livestock. As a result they got reputation of blood-thirsty and spiteful creatures, and on them began to hunt with such diligence that almost completely them exterminated. Actually tigers kill to live, and only. For hunting the tiger almost always waits for nightfall, and then looks for thickets more densely that, hiding in them, imperceptibly to approach production. If hunting is successful, the tiger usually moves hulk on quite long distances to water. Depending on production size the tiger or eats it at one go, often interrupting a meal to get drunk, or protects hulk some days, won't eat up it yet. Though tigers sometimes admit to the production of other tigers, they belong to the animals leading a single life. They have accurate hunting sites which they mark, splashing urine, defecating and leaving traces of claws on trees. Males protect the sites more vigilantly, than females, and don't allow that somewhere other male located nearby. However, if the stranger simply passes through the territory, the owner doesn't interfere with him.
Tigers observe laudable etiquette behind food, eating meat in peace. Tigresses, as a rule, allow to join the meal to any tiger who appeared nearby irrespective of his floor. Males allow to the production only tigresses and tiger cubs.
Tigers submitted imagination of people and inspired in them fear since prehistoric times. Hidden from foreign eyes and with anybody not divided life shrouded tigers in a mystical aura. At the end of the XVIII century the English poet William Blake wrote and supplied with an illustration — the well-known anthem to a tiger and his mysterious eyes flickering in the jungle.
The main food of a tiger - a boar. In the Far East the diet of a tiger is made: a boar, a Manchurian deer, the roe, brown and belogrudy bears, a kabarga, an elk, a spotty deer, a Manchurian hare, a lynx, a wolf, a badger, various birds (hazel grouses are more often). Sometimes predators catch fish and turtles, eat pine nuts, wild berries and fruit. And only being very hungry, the tiger eats drop.
In India they wish to regale on monkeys, peacocks and porcupines attacks on which for a tiger often come to an end very sadly - he remains the cripple. During floods tigers catch fish, turtles, crocodiles. Tigers and attack cubs of wild buffalo s, rhinoceroses and elephants, risking to receive cruel repulse from parents.
It is necessary for an adult tiger in a natural situation for saturation from 10 to 50 kg of meat, depending on that, what is the time he hadn't dinner" before. In a year the adult animal consumes 3-3,5 t of meat.
The tiger can eat amazingly much at one go but if it is necessary, he is capable to starve for weeks, without finding any signs of weakness.
Having gorged on, the tiger drinks much then lays down to have a rest or sleep. Having risen, again drinks, has a rest - and so until the got animal isn't eaten entirely. Such is opinion of many, watching these animals, but the similar behavior is observed only in places with abundance of wild hoofed animals. In places where the number of the main victims - hoofed animals - rather low, the owner of a taiga starts searches of food in some hours or next day. Sometimes there is an impression as if the animal is so well informed on a site of the production that knows where it will be got. Cases of attack of a tiger on pets increase in the years of sharp reduction of number of wild hoofed animals.