Maharashtra: Fierce face-off between Tiger and Bear at Tadoba National Park goes viral

Nature has its own way of surprising and you never know what are animals thinking, a viral video from Maharashtra’s Tadoba National Park captures a violent face-off between an adult tiger and a sloth bear. The video, taken on Wednesday during an afternoon safari, shows the encounter between two fierce animals.

The video begins with the tiger chasing away the bear but suddenly, the sloth bear charges at the tiger. A battle begins and it is far from a playful fight. As the video progresses, the tiger tries to pin the bear down. The sloth bear tries desperately to escape the tiger’s grip. The next few tense minutes see both the tiger and the sloth bear viciously charge at each other trying to have a go at each other, reported NDTV.

Here’s the video of the violent face-off between tiger and bear: 

Akshay Kumar, the chief naturalist at Bamboo Forest Safari Lodge, told NDTV that the tiger is 7-year-old Matkasur, a dominant male from the park who has marked the water body called Jamun Bodi, seen in the video, as his territory. The sloth bear, a female, was headed to the water body with her young cub in search of water when the tiger, which was cooling off in the water, attacked. The mother bear, in order to protect her cub, fought back. The distressed cub roared as its mother took on the tiger.

The tiger attacked the bear more than five minutes. It went after the sloth bear but she kept charging in order to protect her cub,” Kumar told NDTV. “It went on for 15 minutes. The tiger was roaring. It was a severe fight.” Both the tiger and sloth bear suffered injuries in the attack. The young cub ran away during the fight.

Kumar, who shot the video, was leading a safari with tourists when they spotted the face-off between the bear and tiger. The video went viral on social media. “Sloth bears are easy game,” says Dr Anish Andheria, President of Wildlife Conservation Trust. “As you can see in the video, the sloth bear was so exhausted. They can’t outrun tigers,” he told NDTV.

The Sloth bear got injured during the fight but was saved by her fur. Such incidents of animals turning on each other are quite common and plays out frequently during lull periods in forests or parks.