What Do Tigers Eat
Everything You Wanted to Know About What Do Tigers Eat
It’s feeding time at the zoo, and the young children watching the staff prepare the food for tigers wonder “what do tigers eat?” The answer is different for tigers in captivity as opposed to those few still left in the wild.
Tigers are large cats that will travel up to 350 miles in some cases to find food and mates. Their powerful bodies and extremely keen eyesight are the necessary components for tigers in the wild to capture their prey. Most tigers that remain in their natural habitats can be found in forests of India, China, Pakistan, Russia and Cambodia among others in Asia.
People often wonder how often a tiger eats as well as what do tigers eat. A little known fact about tigers is that they will consume between 30 and 40 pounds of meat each day if available. In the wild, when a kill is made by a tiger, the cat will gorge itself with the flesh of its prey to the point of overfeeding. Many times, the meal is so hearty that the tiger would actually vomit if it were to attempt to run after eating. Instead, tigers prefer to sleep for several hours after eating, and may return to the carcass at that time to feed again.
The geographic area of tigers in the wild will generally dictate the answer to the question “what do tigers eat?” The types of food normally associated with their diet would be antelope, deer, buffalo, cattle, small elephants and rhinos as well as monkeys, lizards and fish. Tigers are primarily carnivores, which accounts for the large animal prey, but also consume in smaller amounts vegetation such as grass, berries and available fruits. In the rare cases that tigers kill humans, they do not usually eat them unless the tiger is old or diseased and cannot hunt for standard prey.
So what do tigers eat when in captivity? Because their activity level is so limited in captivity, tigers consume much less per day than those in the wild. The type of food they eat depends largely upon which zoo the tiger calls home. Some zoos feed their tigers a blend of ground beef and ground beef heart for the main meals, adding leg of lamb, racks of ribs, rabbits and an occasional femur bone from a cow as variety. Other zoos prefer a blend of horsemeat which includes the flesh, bones and skin, again adding a mixed diet by offering lamb and rabbit. Chicken is rarely part of what do tigers eat in captivity, partly because of disease control. In all cases, vitamins are supplemented through the meal offerings.
The answer to the query “what do tigers eat” will depend in great deal on whether the tiger is in captivity or in the wild. Nature provides wild tigers with adequate meals, while humans supply meals to the captive tigers. What do tigers eat? The answer can almost always be summed up as “meat”.