Legendary tiger strength on show as tiger pulls SUV backwards with its teeth clamped on bumper

This video has gone viral, as expected. But it shouldn’t surprise people who know about the legendary strength of the tiger. There is something in the bumper of the SUV which attracted this precocious tiger who believed that it was an edible substance and so they clamped their teeth around it and then pulled the “prey animal”. This tiger was dragging his prey into cover to feed on it at some later date. Only it is an SUV full of tourists who were inside and they were in awe at this tiger’s strength.

And the strength of this tiger’s teeth also amazes me 😊. You would think that he would lose some in doing this trick but it was no problem for this superb animal. The event happened in India’s Bannerghatta National Park. The Hindustan Times provide some nice details including the make of the car! It is a Mahindra Xylo SUV. As mentioned, it was packed with tourists.

The video was captured by another tourist in a different vehicle. The tiger was attracted to the vehicle as an edible item. Amusingly one comedian said: “Well, that car is a Xylo, so I guess I’m not surprised he’s chewing on it. He probably shares my view that Mahindra cars are Deeeliciousss”.

Note: This is a video from another website which is embedded here. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

Of course, tigers normally pull genuine prey animals backwards like this, or forwards but always into a quiet, safe place. They can move carcasses that are several times heavier than themselves. For example, in Myanmar a tiger was observed dragging away a gaur ball weighing 770 kg. It took 13 men to try and move it and they failed. They could not move it a yard apparently.

There are other records of tigers dragging large kills for great distances. One tiger reportedly carried a full-grown horse for 500 meters. Another tiger was observed carrying an adult heifer up a 12-foot-high embankment. Tigers prefer to take their kills to a quiet shaded spot to feed. This normally means dense undergrowth. It depends upon the individual tiger as to whether they eat the animal on the spot or later.

The famous tiger hunter turned conservationist, Jim Corbett, described the behaviour of a tiger with a kill. I’m able to recite this verbatim and it may interest people:

“Yesterday the tiger had covered up his kill at the spot where he had done his killing, but today it appeared to be his intention to remove his kill to as distant a place as possible from the scene of the killing. For two miles or more I followed the drag up the steep face of the densely wooded hill to where the tiger, when he had conveyed his heavy burden to within a few hundred yards of the crest, had got one of the cow’s hindlegs fixed between two oak saplings. With a mighty jerk uphill, the tiger tore the leg off a little below the hock, and leaving that fixed between the saplings went on with his kill. The crest of the hill at the point where the tiger arrived with his kill was flat and overgrown with oak saplings a foot or two feet in girth. Under these trees, where there were no bushes or cover of any kind, the tiger left his kill without making any attempt to cover it up.”

Be in awe at the legendary strength of the tiger. All the more reason to be so distressed at the way this magnificent creature is systematically poached for its body parts to supply that obnoxious trade in Chinese traditional medicine. Science does not support traditional Chinese medicine. It is based upon superstition. So sad that human ignorance leads to the cruel death of tigers especially when they are so critically endangered in the wild. Of course, there are thousands of them in China’s tiger farms where they’re treated as livestock and abused.

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