Some predators are bigger and stronger, while others are faster or more agile, but the tiger is surely the perfect balance of power, speed and finesse. That does not, though, make it invincible…
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10 animals that can kill a tiger
Saltwater crocodile
It’s probably fair to say that big cats generally have the upper hand in encounters with crocodiles. In South America, jaguars routinely prey on caimans, ambushing them from the riverbank and dispatching them with a skull-crushing bite to the back of the head, and in Asia, there are anecdotal reports and at least one (unverified) video of tigers making meals of mugger crocodiles.
Fully grown salties, though are a totally different prospect. Exceeding 6m in length and weighing in at over a tonne (four times heavier than the biggest tigers), these ambush predators are the largest of all living reptiles, exert the strongest bite-force of any living animal (equivalent to 1.6 tonnes) and dismantle their prey using a manoeuvre called the ‘death roll’, which involves grasping a limb or head in their jaws and rolling vigorously in the water until it separates from the body.
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Tigers and salties will only ever meet where their ranges overlap at the coast, but one fatal encounter was documented in India’s Sundarban Tiger Reserve in 2011, when an adult female Bengal tiger was killed by a saltie as she swam across a river in the mangrove forests.
Sloth bear
They are not the biggest or strongest of bears. Nor are they fast. They’re not even very good at climbing trees. But sloth bears (one of the deadliest bears in the world) are surely the pluckiest of the ursids.
These shaggy, unkempt insectivores aren’t the type to run from danger. Instead, they stand up, stare it down, and launch a full-blooded counter-attack, slashing at the enemy with teeth and claws designed for ripping into termite nests, while barking maniacally.
As many videos testify, even tigers - significantly bigger than a sloth bear - don’t seem to intimidate them.
In one dramatic encounter, filmed in India’s Tadoba National Park, a female sloth bear with a cub in tow fought off a much larger male tiger in a prolonged, brutal struggle that resulted in visible wounds to both parties.
Tigers normally dominate bears, and bears do sometimes get killed. We could find no records of the bears killing tigers, but such an outcome is by no means unimaginable.
Hippopotamus
Vegetarians they may be, but hippos also happen to be armed with foot-long (30cm) tusk-like canine teeth, a huge gape and what may be the strongest bite of any mammal. And they know how to use them.
If you’ve seen what hippos can do to Nile crocodiles and lions, you’ll have little trouble imagining the mess they could make of a tiger.
Happily for tigers, which are now confined to South and East Asia, hippos are not found outside Africa.
Asian Elephant
Sharp teeth and claws are little use against an enemy that is 15 times your size and could wipe you out just by sitting on you. Clearly, an adult Asian elephant could kill a tiger. But does it ever actually happen?
It is often said that tigers will prey on elephant calves, given the opportunity, and that adult elephants defend their young vigorously against attacks. However, we’ve not managed to find a single well-documented case of a tiger killing a calf or, indeed, of a tiger being killed by elephants.
That doesn’t mean that such events never happen. But it does suggest that, if they do, they are rare events. Tigers and elephants tend to avoid each other like the plague where their ranges overlap, perhaps because close encounters could result in disaster for either party - or even both of them.
Wild boar
Wild boar are routine prey for tigers in some parts of their range, but they are no soft touches. Large males can match a tiger for size and are armed with vicious upward-pointing tusks capable of inflicting serious damage to an assailant’s vulnerable underparts .
In 1978, a biologist named G.F. Bromley described a violent fight between a large male Amur tiger and an old wild boar in the Russian Far East. The boar was killed at the scene killed, but the tiger was later found dead some 45 km away, having apparently succumbed to wounds sustained during the encounter.
Gaur
It’s a brave tiger that tackles a gaur. This is the largest species of wild cattle in the world. The males in particular are absolute units that can exceed a tonne in weight. There are also the enormous, curved, pointy horns to consider.
Little surprise that it can go horribly, horribly wrong for a tiger that tries to make a meal of one. In June In 2021, the Star of Mysore newspaper reported https://starofmysore.com/indian-gaur-gores-tigress-to-death-in-a-fight-at-bandipur/ that a female tiger had been killed by a gaur she had attacked in India’s Bandipur Tiger Reserve. According to the report, the gaur “gored the tigress with its horns near its ribs slicing open a part of its body” and that the tiger died at the scene.
Python
Like boas and anacondas, pythons kill by coiling their muscular body around their victim and squeezing very hard, causing death by asphyxiation. They then swallow their prey whole, aided by slack-hinged jaws and elastic skin.
The journal of the Bombay Natural History Society contains a record, published in 1907, of a 6m-long Burmese python killing and eating a leopard in north-west India, and reticulated pythons - the longest of all snakes - have been documented preying on sun bears.
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There don’t seem to be any records, though, of pythons killing tigers, which are considerably larger than leopards, sun bears and people. However, it’s not inconceivable that a 7m-long python could asphyxiate a tiger, especially if it got a good coil in early. The possibility that it could eat one, though, is perhaps harder to swallow.
Dhole
About the size of a border collie, these pack-hunting canids can work together to hunt prey ten times as heavy, such as sambar deer, which they chase down over long distances and disembowel. If size is all that matters, then tigers - which are about the same weight as a sambar - might be on the menu, too.
Certainly, the relationship between dholes and tigers is a fractious one. The two species compete with each other for prey and will gladly steal each other’s kills if they get the chance. But while tigers have been reported stalking and killing dholes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voQJwgedSvY the evidence for dholes killing tigers is limited to a few unreliable historical reports. But that’s not to say it never happens.
Porcupine
Tigers are partial to a porcupine. But these spiky rodents make a formidable meal. Their backward pointing quills can inflict devastating and sometimes fatal injuries on the most fearsome of predators.
A quick google turned up five newspaper reports of tigers being killed by porcupines since the turn of the century. Impaled during the hunt or the feed. An autopsy of a tiger killed in India’s Anamalai Tiger Reserve in 2012 found that quills had penetrated its heart.
Tigers that aren’t killed outright may be so disabled that they are incapable of hunting and go on to die of starvation. There’s a theory that porcupine-inflicted injuries can push tigers towards hunting humans.
Lion
We’re now in the realm of irresistible forces meeting immovable objects. Lions and tigers are well matched for both size and weaponry, so it’s far from obvious which would have the edge should fur start flying. One clue might be that lions tend to hunt and defend themselves in groups, while tigers are proverbial lone wolves, which might put the latter at an advantage in a one-to-one situation.
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Either way, there is little opportunity to test it. Historically, the two species overlapped in the Middle East and South Asia, but not anymore. Tigers are now restricted to South and East Asia, while lions are largely confined to Africa. Even the small lion population that hangs on in the west of India is a long way from the nearest tiger.
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