Some of the wonderful scheme of things that nature throws up every now and then can now be seen in the 143 sq km expanse of Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Yavatmal district in Maharashtra, which is where the Kawal Tiger Reserve in erstwhile undivided Adilabad gets some of its tigers from.
While a rare instance has one 10-month-old cub of the ‘talav wali’ tigress is moving with the sub-adult cubs of another female big cat called Maregaon tigress, the remaining two cubs of the former can be seen moving with quills of a porcupine dangling from their head.
“Coming under attack from a porcupine apparently after getting attracted to its movement, one of the cubs got pierced with two quills in its nose and lower jaw while the other had seven or eight piercing its lower jaw and neck,” pointed out a Nagpur-based wildlife enthusiast, Mohammed Junaid, who shot the pictures of the cubs on December 22. As the cubs were sighted without the quills by other nature lovers in the sanctuary the previous day, he assumed that the phenomenon occurred sometime on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday.
Mr. Junaid suggested the forest teams should keep a close watch on the cubs as one of the two seemed a little weak and both need to be rescued from the painful things. “Sometimes the quills just drop off or the mother does the job of removing the needle like things for them,” he pointed out. “Though there are no studies on Indian porcupines, it can be said that infection could take place once the anti-septic nature of the quills wears off,” pointed out Hyderabad-based wildlife photographer and activist Sanjeev Siva, who belongs to the tiger conservation group, Conservation Lenses and Wildlife (ClaW), indicating that the cubs could need help in near future.
Further, he also talked about some species of porcupine attacking with quills having projections at one end which makes the task of their extraction difficult for the big cats.
As for the rare phenomenon, Mr. Siva said tigresses generally do not tolerate cubs from other females of their ilk for various reasons. “For one, it could mean increased hunting activity for the ‘host’ mother as it has to feed one extra cub,” he observed.
