With the recent    incidents  of   alleged   man-eating by the tigers in the Sunderban  mangrove forest it would be a worthwhile exercise to   trace the history of man-eating tigers with a view to get a proper understanding of this phenomenon.

During prehistoric  time  when man was extremely vulnerable and unable to defend himself against   predators,  tigers  viewed  humans as natural prey and hunted them as they would hunt natural prey today. Humans at that time constituted a good portion of a tiger’s food as in   all probability they  were  considered  easy prey not having developed efficient defense mechanisms against predation.

In the  course  of  time,  man discovered the use of tools, agriculture and controlled fire,  which  in  turn  led to,    a more  settled  and  community based  lifestyle.  These  resulted in a co-operative style of living and with the advantages  of  co-operative    hunting,  humans  were able to defend themselves.  While  these  developments led to the tiger gaining respect for humans, they continued   to regard them as natural prey. Marco Polo records that they were feared as man-eaters in China.

The next  major  change  in  the relationship between humans and tigers occurred   with  the   advent   of  gunpowder   and   firearms.  With   this advantage, humans  now  became  the aggressors and actively began to harass  and  hunt  tigers.  It was  at this stage that tigers began to avoid humans  and  stopped  viewing  them  as  natural  prey.  They   however continued  to  kill  livestock when they got the opportunity. This  more or less became the norm over the last two to three centuries.

This  change  was  extremely  gradual and certainly not uniform over the tigers range  with  a  result  that  more  or  less  all  three  stages  of the relationship  were  relevant  during  the  same period depending upon the remoteness  and  development  of the human settlement. It was   also at this time  that  the  human  population  started registering a rapid growth and humans  started  encroaching  more and more into the  tiger’s home thus coming into conflict.

Man-eating  was  not a  major problem in Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia and South India. There  does not  seem  to  be  a satisfactory ecological explanation for this.

In India,  the   problem   was   reported  from  Bengal,  the  then  Central Provinces and the  Himalayan  foothills.  Jim Corbett’s book gives a vivid picture of man-eating in the Himalayan foothills. The reasons he gives for man-eating  is  the  stress  of circumstances that led them to it   and he goes on to  state  nine  times  out  of  ten  it  was  due  to  wounds  that hampered  them  from killing normal prey and the tenth was old age that resulted  in  them  being unable to hunt. He also goes on to say that the changeover  to  man-eating  was  accidental.  The  first victim was rarely eaten  and  was always killed when he was in a bending posture usually while cutting  grass.  Thus  not  easily  identifiable  as  a  human  with a characteristic  upright  posture.  He  cites  the availability of natural prey being  a  key factor in the frequency of kills. This leads us to believe that they  did not  survive  on  a  purely human diet and that most importantly there was a drastic reduction in the availability of natural prey.

In the recent past, there was an  eruption  of  man-eating  in the Dudhwa National Park. It started in 1978, lasted for about ten years, and resulted in   the   death   of nearly two hundred humans. The reason for this were many and varied,  the  major   being that a rash of tree felling across the border in Nepal had   resulted  in  the  migration   of  tigers   from   there resulting   in  an  unnatural  and  sudden  increase  in  tiger population of Dudhwa. The  intrusion  of  woodcutters  and  cart  men  into the park to collect  firewood  blown  down  in a  storm  at  precisely  this time led to greater interface  between  humans  and  tigers. The  scarcity  of natural prey  also  played  a  significant  role. With the migration of  tigers, older and  weaker  animals  were  pushed  to  the  edges of the park. Farmers along  the  park  boundary  had taken to sugarcane cultivation on a large scale, tigers  moved  into these sugarcane fields, and this further bought the two into conflict.