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In reply to the discussion: Suspected poacher eaten by lions in South Africa [View all]The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,543 posts)61. The lions might have had something more than just lunch in mind.
I read this fascinating book - The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, about a tiger who had once been shot and injured by a poacher, and had started stalking specific people - especially the man who had shot him. It appeared that the tiger's intent wasn't hunting for food, but for revenge. Maybe the lions were doing the same thing. Cats are very smart and not to be trifled with.
In 1997, deep in the remote Russian backcountry, a gigantic Amur tiger begins acting like the only thing more savage than a wild animal--us. It doesnt just attack villagers; it hunts them, picking its targets like a hitman with a contract, at one point even dragging a mattress out of a shack so it can lie comfortably in wait until the woodsman returns home. A few days later, the woodsmans horrified friends discover remains so small and so few they could have fit in a shirt pocket.
Vaillant is as masterful with science as he is with suspense. We feel what its like to be in a tiny settlement cut off from the rest of the world, at the mercy of a beast so swift that it cant be seen until its mouth bites down on your face. Tigers, Vaillant explains, are natures last word in mammalian weapons design. Big as three NFL linebackers bundled into one, armed with claws longer than fingers and jaws rated on a strength-scale used for dinosaurs, tigers are built like missiles and can out-swim, out-climb, out-fox and out-run just about anything that breathes. Thats the bad news; the worse news is, theyre also armed with memory and invisibility.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003F3PKY0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Vaillant is as masterful with science as he is with suspense. We feel what its like to be in a tiny settlement cut off from the rest of the world, at the mercy of a beast so swift that it cant be seen until its mouth bites down on your face. Tigers, Vaillant explains, are natures last word in mammalian weapons design. Big as three NFL linebackers bundled into one, armed with claws longer than fingers and jaws rated on a strength-scale used for dinosaurs, tigers are built like missiles and can out-swim, out-climb, out-fox and out-run just about anything that breathes. Thats the bad news; the worse news is, theyre also armed with memory and invisibility.
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You have a wide-ranging and penetratingly discursive imagination, Ohiya. I think
Joe Chi Minh
Feb 2018
#57
I visited Kruger Park in 2009. It's well tended; poacher had to go out of his way to sneak a kill.
ancianita
Feb 2018
#42
For more scatalogical information, Solly, see Ohiya's post, above, at 8.35.
Joe Chi Minh
Feb 2018
#62
Suspected big cat poacher 'savaged and eaten alive by lion pride he was trying to hunt'
Judi Lynn
Feb 2018
#71