Ranthambore National Park, Sawai Madhopur
News Update: 08-April-2018
Came as great sigh of relief for the forest officials of the Ranthambore National Park, the Tigress T-83 aka Lightning finally reunited with her two small cubs on the night of the Saturday. The tigress returned to her cubs after the seven days since she abandoned them in a farmland in the Amaghati forest region on the fringe of the Ranthambore National Park.
After reuniting with its cubs in the Amaghati forest area, the tigress fed her cubs properly who were hungry for seven days. As per the information given by a forest official, the tigress stayed with the cubs the whole night and took care of them before she left again around 4.30 o’clock in the morning.
The whole story started around seven days ago in the Ranthambore National Park when the tigress T-83 abandoned her two cubs that were only two and a half months old and went away, leaving all the wildlife experts and forest department of Ranthambore baffled and stressed for the security and survival of these two small cubs on their own in the wild.
As per the forest officials, the tigress abandoned her cubs and went to the different zone to stay with a male tiger T-95. The movements of both the tigers were recorded in the Jhumar Bawri forest region. According to the wildlife experts, there could be two probable reasons for this behavior of the mother tigress. “First possible reason could be that the tigress is afraid that her cubs could be in danger due to the presence of T-95. Second, the tigress wants to stay with T-95 and so has abandoned her cubs,” as per the experts.
The forest department of Ranthambore was extremely concerned about the security and survival of these two cubs as it is almost impossible for them to survive in the wild without the caring of their mother. As per the forest officials, a small tiger cub can normally survive four days without the food, but after that the risk of life increased a lot.
When the tigress left again in the morning, an official claimed, “The tigress possibly left again to protect her cubs as T-95 tiger, with whom she was mated, also reached the Amaghati area. We are hoping she would return again tonight. The movement of the tigress and cubs is being monitored constantly.”