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S44E13: Legendary Tigers of India | Clip

Why This Tiger Hunts Turtles… And Crocodiles

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When a female tiger’s behavior becomes dangerous and unpredictable, researchers are left puzzled. Weeks later, the reason reveals itself.

TRANSCRIPT

- Recently, she started behaving in unpredictable ways.

I was startled when I saw on a camera's viewfinder Arrowhead arriving at the lakes and finding a way to attack an enormous softshell turtle.

(birds squawking) And she not only grabs the turtle in the shallow water, she picks it up and rushes back into the grass and starts to devour it.

Was she, like Genghis all those years before, not afraid of crocodiles in the lakes?

Well, what I saw next made me think that she was not fearless but desperate.

Arrowhead's back in the lakes.

And this time, she chases after a small crocodile.

She charges into the water, misses the baby crocodile.

But she doesn't realize she's in a deep place and there are bigger crocodiles.

The big crocodiles pounce on her under the water.

(water splashing) And I don't know how, she manages to free herself.

And then a short while later, someone filmed her eating a crocodile.

Suddenly, memories of years ago come flooding back, and I remembered that my nephew Jaisal had filmed this: Arrowhead's grandmother Machli wrestling and eventually killing a four-meter crocodile.

No one had ever recorded such a thing before or since.

Severe droughts had driven Machli to behave in this way.

What was driving Arrowhead?

A few days later, we found out.

She had been pregnant and in desperate need of protein for her milk.