Weekly “Arguments and facts” n°01-02. Why did Kazakhstan catch fire? 01/12/2022
Do we know him well? For example, what is the real Amur tiger (aka, named after the taiga, Ussuriysky) – the only subspecies of tigers living in our country? Why do representatives of the indigenous peoples of Eastern Siberia (and not only them) consider this largest and northernmost predatory feline in the world, capable of surviving –40°C, as a “divine beast”? About this “AiF” said specialists in the study and protection of Amur tigers.
Intellectual predator
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&ldash;Amur Tiger– a great mystery and will remain so for a long time, – Primorsky biologist-gamekeeper Pavel Fomenko, honorary nature conservation worker of the Russian Federation, believes.In March 2018, he almost died from an attack of the one of his wards – family tigresses. She tore the fence of the enclosure in which she was for rehabilitation and treatment, rushed at the scientist and seriously injured him. After that, however, he did not quit his job and returned to protecting the tigers on the Amur.
“Our Tiger– not just a “big wild cat”, but a special, almost mystical animal, – said Fomenko. – It is he who rules the ball in the Far Eastern taiga, here he is the real king of nature. Rarely does anyone see it, but in the forest you smell the tiger with a special “vision”. This state can be described by the word “maeta”: nothing seems to be happening, but something around you is no longer the same. Experienced hunters are well aware of this. Perhaps this is the strongest tiger energy? ”
In addition, the Amur Tiger behaves like an inveterate intellectual: it is intelligent and has an excellent memory, and it remembers not only bad, but also good. “My friends Nanai, from whom the tiger stole the prey, said that he returned it later. And such cases have happened more than once. It happens like this : a hunter kills, say, a wild boar, hides it in the forest, because it is difficult to take away all the meat at once. Then a tiger finds this place and eats the wild boar carcass. And after a while , the same hunter goes away, looks, and on his way is the half-carcass of another wild boar, killed by this tiger Or, for example, frightened animals jump out of the forest on a hunter, but it turns out that the tiger himself led them to him. And all because while butchering his prey in the forest, a man carefully left some of it for the tiger.
“The Amur tiger pursues its aggressor individually, and very often it ends badly for one person, – confirmsecologist and director, creator of the film studio “Call of the Taiga” Vassili Solkin,< /strong>For many years he worked as a researcher at the Laboratory of Large Predators of the Institute of Pacific Geography, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. – There are cases when a wounded tiger was waiting for the very one who shot him for a long time. So not all people are the same to them. It also happens the other way around: I know several tigers who tolerated me when they were on the same hunting ground as me. It was not a friendship, but rather a relationship of gentlemen. Of course, they did not bring meat to the threshold of my hut in the taiga. But it happens that the tiger calmly looks aside at the hunter who approaches, cuts off, say, a leg of a boar killed by this tiger, puts it in his bag and takes it away. And the beast does not interfere with that.
“I'm always afraid of transferring certain human traits to a tiger. However, when I first met him one-on-one in the middle of the taiga, the sensations were indescribable, – said Solkin. – This image is always before my eyes. A tiger, unlike a bear or a wolf, has a “facial expression”. It seems to speak to you: with its eyes, its ears, its facial expressions… And when& #39;he's following you on your trail, you're trying to figure out Why is he breathing so obsessively in the back of your head Because he's not attacking So why does he need this persecution? There are relations between a tiger and a man, which are difficult to explain. Yes, if he finds your prey, he will attack it. But you, having taken advantage of a tiger's prey, will not be killed by him for it.
Fear of the amba
Other unusual features have been noticed in the Amur tiger. Pavel Fomenko told one such story: “According to one of the projects, two tigers were to return to the historic habitats of the Jewish Autonomous Region: first a male, and after almost a year – female. On the day the tigress was released into the wild, the male, who was at a distance of 100 km, suddenly turned at a right angle and walked towards the tigress without looking back anywhere. How did he know her, how did he feel? Another time, a tiger named Vladik, after being released 700 km from the place of capture, returned almost in a straight line “home”.
“The Udege, Nanai and representatives of other indigenous peoples of the Far East still consider the tiger today as a 'divine beast': for many of them it is #39;is still an “amba”; – a mighty fierce spirit that can both forgive and punish, – said Fomenko. – Related to this are the legends about the tiger, which boil down to the idea: “you can't make God angry”. “Our tiger, unlike its other subspecies, does not attract people's attention if it is healthy, well-fed and well. A hunter can hunt in the taiga for at least 30 years old, but even being next to a tiger, he will never see it. But if the beast appeared in the eyes – it means that something is wrong with this predator: he is either sick , either hungry or angry at something Udege, who had never read books about Dersu Uzala and had not watched the movie of the same name Akira Kurosawa, said to me, “If you saw a tiger in the taiga, then your death has come.”
It's no coincidence that Dersu Uzala changed so much after unintentionally killing a tiger in the taiga: he became gloomy and irritable, then died a tragic death. “The thought that he had killed the tiger in vain gave him no rest, – explained the writer Vladimir Arseniev.– She followed him everywhere. seemed that sooner or later he would pay for it and even on the other side of death he would have to give an answer.
Hunters are rude< /h2>
As Pavel Fomenko clarifies, according to the official archives of 2015, in the Primorsky Territory, on the right bank of the Amur in the Khabarovsk Territory, in the Jewish Autonomous Region and the Amur Region. there were only 540 tigers. Today, there may already be around 600 of them. At the same time, Amur tigers live not only in nature reserves and national parks: 80% of their population lives in unprotected forests and hunting farms. 10% of tigers live in China, where to kill the “divine beast” pronounced the death penalty. But poachers are still chasing them.
“Often, need drives people to kill a tiger, – explains Fomenko. – Also, there have always been, there are, and there will be war tigers that attack livestock and pets. due to the lack of ungulates in the taiga, injuries or diseases, striped predators sometimes come to villages for cattle and dogs, for example, the snowy winter of 1983-1984 led to the catastrophic death of tens of thousands of ungulates in the northern Primorsky and southern Khabarovsk Territory As a result, in 1985, only according to official data, 20 tigers were slaughtered in Primorye, in 1986 – already 43 According to Vasily Solkin, the vast majority of people in Primorye have never seen a tiger in the wild: compared to the tiger: they behave more aggressively, often not out of malice, but out of fear Especially when it comes to a hunting area, where your well-being depends the number of sables you have captured. And a huge predatory cat bothers you there from morning to evening, which, by its very presence, causes irritation. The result is a confrontation between beast and man.”.