A Black Predator Is Killing Siberian Tigers — And No One Can Explain It

Siberian tigers are being killed and eaten in the Russian Far East, and the animal responsible is not another tiger. Russian biologists keep finding Amur tiger carcasses with the wrong signature on them: no deep canine punctures, but crushing damage, broad claw rakes, and a body that has been fed on. The tracks leaving those sites belong to the Ussuri brown bear. But the record runs both ways, and the number almost every video on this subject repeats is wrong. In this investigation we go through what the field evidence actually shows about Amur tigers and brown bears in Sikhote-Alin and Khabarovsk Territory: the forty-four documented encounters and what the tally really counts, the satellite bears that follow a single tiger from kill to kill for an entire season, the camera trap sequence from the Durminskoye reserve that recorded a bear shadowing a tigress with two cubs, and the radio collared male tiger who killed a full grown brown bear with one bite and a broken tooth. What decides these encounters is not body weight. It is who chooses the moment. SOURCES USED Seryodkin, I.V., Miquelle, D.G., Goodrich, J.M., Kostyria, A.V., Petrunenko, Y.K. (2018). Interspecific Relationships between the Amur Tiger and Brown and Asiatic Black Bears. Biology Bulletin 45(8): 853-864. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1062359018080149 Seryodkin, I.V. (2016). Behavior of Brown Bears During Feeding in the Sikhote-Alin. https://cyberleninka.org/article/n/1420801 Goodrich, J.M. Panthera. A Dance with Death: Tigers and Bears Battle in Northeast Asia. https://panthera.org/blog-post/dance-death-tigers-and-bears-battle-northeast-asia Seryodkin, I.V., Goodrich, J.M., Kostyria, A.V., Schleyer, B.O., Smirnov, E.N., Kerley, L.L., Miquelle, D.G. (2005). Relationship between tigers, brown bears, and Himalayan black bears. Pages 156-163 in Miquelle, D.G., Smirnov, E.N., Goodrich, J.M. (eds), Tigers of Sikhote-Alin Zapovednik: Ecology and Conservation. PSP, Vladivostok, Russia. Print, in Russian. Kostoglod, V.E. (1976). Field observations on brown bear tracking of predators in the Sikhote-Alin. Cited in Seryodkin (2016). Field reports by Alexander Batalov, director of the Durminskoye forestry reserve, Lazo district, Khabarovsk Territory, on the tigress Rachelle and the resident male Ochkarik.