Post by brobear on Oct 31, 2023 12:21:30 GMT -5
Who to believe - two completely inexperienced, untrained, unqualified armchair "tiger experts", one a juvenile fanboy and the other a fake professor, or the real field experts/biologists who have dedicated their entire lives to studying and tracking wild Amur tigers in the Russian taiga?
The two armchair "tiger experts" claim each and every story they read of a tiger killing an adult male brown bear as a confirmed fact.
The field biologists say that there have yet to be even one single case of a tiger killing an adult male brown bear confirmed.
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Ochkarik, although obviously (being a male) larger than the tigress Rachel, was not a large tiger. Batalov estimated Ochkarik to weigh around 160 - 180 kg. So he was a medium-sized (below average) tiger. However, despite his moderate-size, he was a very powerful, confident and dominant male tiger and a known bear-killer. He successfully ruled and defended his territory for many years and was a great hunter. There's a video of Ochkarik climbing a tree hunting for black bears. Chlamida was a gigantic male brown bear of immense proportions. Although Batalov never estimated Chlamida's weight specifically, he did say he was "incredibly huge", hence his name - 'Chlamida'.
If we consider the fact that the average adult male Ussuri brown bear weighs around 260 - 272 kg, its most likely Chlamida, being a giant bear, weighed 400+kg. Very large male Ussuri brown bears weigh up to 400 - 600 kg, especially if well-fed like Chlamida was. So Ochkarik killed a brown bear at least twice his own weight or likely more. The size difference (weight-wise) between Ochkarik and Chlamida was very significant.
I found a picture of Ochkarik after he had killed and eaten Chlamida. Remember Batalov said that after killing and eating Chlamida, Ochkarik had fattened up a lot, his stomach was inflated.
Here's the picture, notice how his stomach looks fat, he clearly ate a lot of bear:
"The bespectacled tiger once killed and ate a brown bear that was chasing a tigress with a cub. After that, he was so inflated that Batalov could not at first understand what had happened. But then I found bear meat in tiger excrement."
"(Photo No. 7 - the image was taken by a camera trap owned by Alexander Batalov. In the photo is a bespectacled tiger that ate a bear and therefore has a fat belly)."