Why India's two famous tigresses have a penchant for multiple sex partners
A strong maternal instinct to protect cubs makes them opt for “false mating”
Maya and Tara, India’s two famed tigresses, live hundreds of kilometres away from each other. One, Maya, also known as the Queen of Tadoba, lives in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve of Maharashtra and the other in Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh. But, two behavioural traits bind them.
Both have a penchant for multiple sexual partners and, like all big cats, they are fiercely protective towards their young cubs.
Interestingly, what may seem amoral to humans, is actually a ploy which is known as ‘false mating’ in the world of tigers. This is increasingly being deployed by many tigresses in the Indian forests, to ensure the safety of their cubs. Till now, not much was known about this phenomenon.
But, gradually, the lid is coming off from one of the least understood behaviour of tigers in the wild: why some tigresses, but not all, like to have several sexual partners even when they are rearing their cubs?
False mating
The short but incomplete answer is that they indulge in “false mating” to protect the cubs from being attacked by other male tigers, who may not be their biological father but are lulled into believing otherwise!
Not that we know too much about the ways of the tigers. Barring a few honest attempts made by researchers in the Wildlife Institute of India and other such institutions, the last thorough study involving the Indian tiger was done by an American biologist, Dr George Schaller, about 60 years ago, in the Kanha National Park of Madhya Pradesh.
The recent coffee table books authored by people who are celebrity “tiger experts”, despite not having undertaken any scientific or field work, have only muddied the waters further.
The seemingly bizarre conduct of some tigresses going for multiple partners is a phenomenon observed more in the high-density tiger areas. Or, specifically in those stretches of forests, where a resident tigress finds her territory being visited frequently by three or four tigers.
Also read: Regulated harvest of tigers, elephants need of the hour: Madhav Gadgil
The killer male tiger
This overlapping of her territory with several males present a real danger to her cubs. As is the practice among big cats, a male who is not the biological father of the cubs will kill them at the first available opportunity, ostensibly to bring the female into heat and to sire his own line of cubs.
A tigress who fails to take heed of this threat often ends up paying a high price for the negligence. A recent example is that of the well-known tigress Spotty, in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve of Madhya Pradesh. A proud mother of four young cubs she was a huge draw among the tourists – until one day in 2019, when all the four cubs were found mauled to death.
The culprit was discovered to be a Chakradhara male tiger, who also went by the name of Murkata. As Sanjay Singh, an experienced naturalist from Bandhavgarh explained: “The real father of the cubs was a Bhagoda male. But, after Spotty gave birth to them, he was hardly seen in the area. Even at that time, we knew the cubs were in great danger. Unfortunately, our fears came true one morning.’’
Clever tigress
While Spotty did not play her cards well, tigress Tara from Bandhavgarh has gone ahead with ‘false mating’ to save the lives of her four cubs. And, the good news is that she has succeeded admirably.
She mated with the male tiger Chota Bheem, who went on to act like a doting father to her four sub-adult cubs. He believes that he is their father because Tara had mated with him, but he is wrong for two reasons.
When the picture (on the left) was clicked in May 2023, at two years of age, he was too young to have fathered a cub even after mating. Also, during that time, Tara had mated with two other male tigers in the area as well.
Maya of Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve too has taken recourse to false mating for many years now. And that’s the reason her cubs have survived. In July 2016, the Smithsonian Magazine reported her behaviour in its story, titled “Sorry Tiger Dudes, Your Ladies are faking it”.
Maya did not stop with just one round of false mating with the available males in her territory. But, this strategy worked and she has cleared saved her litter. And, Maya and her cubs continue to be one of the most loved and photographed tigers of Tadoba and a big draw in the tiger reserve.
Bizarre but serious
In 2023, Maya again resorted to false mating – this time, it seems, to save her four-month-old cub. For the past many days, tourists have been witnessing strange scenes; while Maya is busy mating with the male tiger Rudra, her cub is being taken care of by its biological father Balram. Bizarre as the situation may seem, Maya’s intention is deadly serious: to keep her cub out of harm’s way.
But, overall, the situation is not rosy for the Indian tiger. While the tiger population is increasing in most tiger reserves, the extent of forest cover has not grown. This has led to tigers jostling for space, overlapping of territories and consequent threat to newborns and tiger cubs.
We know little about the mysterious world of tigers even today. Jim Corbett’s apt observation readily comes to mind.
In one of his books, he recalls hearing a man boasting to his cabinmate in a ship bound for Mombasa, “Oh, I know all about tigers. I spent a few weeks in India.”
To this, Corbett, the slayer of some of the most ferocious man-eating tigers and leopards in the last century, the person who roamed far and wide in the forests of Kumaon and Garhwhal for close to 70 years and an author par excellence, wryly remarked later: “This man claimed to know about tigers in a few weeks which cannot be learnt in a lifetime”.
