01 Mark a range
Scrapes and spray advertise a solitary territory.
Operating a tiger life is a loop: sense, decide, act, and stay inside an energy and legal envelope.
Steps are type-level -- hunt, migrate or spawn -- not a promise that every individual follows the same film sequence.
Principles
Energy in, work out
Sit-and-ambush on chital, sambar, wild pig and, in the Amur, deer and boar. A large kill funds days; livestock is the conflict calorie.
Information before motion
Night vision and hearing in closed forest. Stripes break outline more than they advertise.
Replacement rate
Slow breeders (whales, apes, albatrosses, tigers) cannot outrun a short political cycle. Fast clutch species still fail if the nest site vanishes.
Place is part of the phenotype
A tiger without its lake, ice, anemone or gravel is a different, usually failing, animal.
Human systems are now habitat
Quotas, feeders, reserves and films rewrite survival as much as weather. A few thousand animals, shrinking SE Asian forest, and a prey base that snares erase. High cultural impact does not raise resilience.
Diagrams
Tiger forage / hunt loop
Tracksense
Stalkmove
Killact
Guardhandle
Raiseinvest
Disperseleave
Tiger life-cycle loop
Birthstart
Weangrow
Learnmove
Disperselearn
Breedbreed
Senescenceend
Life-cycle steps
02 Ambush from cover
A short rush, not a lion-style group run.
03 Kill and drag
Throat or nape bite; drag to cover.
04 Guard the carcass
Days of return; cubs learn on the remains.
05 Raise a litter
18-month dependence -- a slow replacement rate.
06 Disperse or die
Subadults hit roads, snares and other tigers.
Hard limits
Physiological envelope
A few thousand animals, shrinking SE Asian forest, and a prey base that snares erase. High cultural impact does not raise resilience.
Place dependence
Without the breeding site or forage pulse, brochure behaviour is theoretical.
Human and legal limits
Quotas, listings and trade rules now bound real populations as tightly as weather.
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