LARGE ANIMAL ATTACKS - Medicine for Mountaineering and Other Wilderness Activities - page 473

The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers in
captivity. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that as many as 12,000 tigers
are being kept as private pets in the United States, 4000 in Texas alone. However, parts
of the captive population, such as the 4000 to 5000 animals in China's commercial tiger
farms, are of low genetic diversity.
Tigerskillbetween600and800humansayear.Inspiteoftheirdwindlingnumbersthey
are the world's number one “man killer,” at least on land. Over the last five centuries, an
estimated 1,000,000 people have been killed by tigers. Between 1800 and 1900, tigers are
estimated to have killed over 300,000 people in India alone.
Man-eating tigers in India between 1906 and 1941 killed and ate an estimated 125 per-
sons each. One notorious man-eating tigress known as Champawat killed 436 individuals
in India and Nepal before she was killed in 1907 by Jim Corbett, a famous tiger hunter.
Examination of the tigress disclosed that the upper and lower canine teeth on the right side
of her mouth were broken, which had prevented her from killing her usual prey and had
caused her to become a man-eater.
Tigers are normally wary of humans and have shown no preference for human flesh.
Mostmaneatingtigershavedisabilities orareold,ortheirhabitatandusualpreyhavebeen
destroyed.Theybecomeman-eatersbecausehumansareeasypreyonceatasteisacquired.
Tasteforhumanfleshmaybeacquiredbytheconsumptionofcorpsesthathavelainunbur-
ied. During the Vietnam and Korean Wars, soldiers were killed and injured by tigers who
had acquired a taste for human flesh.
Currently most man-eating occurs in the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve in India and
Bangladesh,whereanestimated5percentofthetigersarebelievedtobeman-eaters.Some
of the tigers are entirely healthy. Hundreds of honey collectors, woodcutters, and fisher-
men have been killed in the reserve's mangrove jungles even though entering the reserve
without a permit is illegal.
Unlike man-eating leopards, man-eating tigers seldom enter human settlements, usually
sticking to village outskirts. They typically stalk their prey from behind and, reportedly,
rarely press an attack if they are seen before their ambush is mounted. Tigers are known
to stalk groups of people bending down while working in a field or cutting grass but lose
interest as soon as the people stand upright, leading to the hypothesis that some attacks are
instances of mistaken identity.
An adult tiger is so powerful that a human is often killed instantly. A blow to the head
often has sufficient force to produce skull fractures. Like other big cats, a tiger prefers to
strike without warning from behind, biting the head and neck and often shaking its head
violently to sever the person's spinal cord. The resulting wounds can include lacerations,
sometimes penetrating body cavities, deep puncture wounds, fractures that may be extens-
ive, and contusions. In addition the wounds are contaminated by bacteria on the teeth and