Wild Beasts and Their Ways, Reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa and America — Volume 1Baker, Samuel White, Sir
History
Wild Beasts and Their Ways, Reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa and America — Volume 1
Baker, Samuel White, Sir
Animal behavior; Hunting
The attack of a large tiger is terrific, and the effect may be well
imagined of an animal of such vast muscular proportions, weighing
between 400 and 500 lbs., springing with great velocity, and exerting
its momentum at the instant that it seizes a bullock by the neck. It is
supposed by the natives that the tiger, when well fastened upon the
crest, by fixing its teeth in the back of the neck at the first onset,
continues its spring so as to pass over the animal attacked. This
wrenches the neck suddenly round, and as the animal struggles, the
dislocation is easily effected. The tiger then changes the hold to
underneath the throat, and drags the body to some convenient retreat,
where the meal may be commenced in security. With very few exceptions
the tiger breaks the neck of every animal it kills. Some persons have
imagined that this is done by a blow of the paw, but this is an error.
The tiger does not usually strike (like the lion), but it merely seizes
with its claws, and uses them to clutch firm hold, and to lacerate its
victim. I have seen several examples of the tiger's attack upon man, and
in no instance has the individual suffered from the shock of any blow;
the tiger has seized, and driven deeply its claws into the flesh, and
with this tremendous purchase it has held the victim, precisely as the
hands of a man would clutch a prisoner; at the same time it has taken a
firm hold with its teeth, and either killed its victim by a crunch of
the jaws, or broken the shoulder-blade. In attacking man the tiger
generally claws the head, and at the same moment it fixes its teeth upon
the shoulder. An Indian is generally slight, and shallow in the chest,
therefore the wide-spread jaws can include both chest and back when
seized in the tiger's mouth. I have seen men who were thus attacked, and
each claw has cut down to the skull, leaving clean incisions from the
brow across the forehead and over the scalp, terminating at the back of
the neck. These cuts were as neatly drawn across the skull as though
done by a sharp pruning-knife; but the wounded men recovered from the
clawing; the fatal wound was the bite, which through the back and chest
penetrated to the lungs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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