The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

In the 1970s, after the Damansky Island clashes, a joke began circulating: “Optimists study English; pessimists study Chinese; and realists learn to use a Kalashnikov.”

Within every major ecosystem nature has produced, she has evolved a singularly formidable predator to rule over it.

What is amazing—and also terrifying about tigers—is their facility for what can only be described as abstract thinking. Very quickly, a tiger can assimilate new information—evidence, if you will—ascribe it to a source, and even a motive, and react accordingly.1 Sergei Sokolov is a former hunting inspector who now works as a researcher for the Insti

There is strong evidence suggesting that this region was a refugium, one of several areas around the Pacific Rim that remained ice-free during the last glaciation, and this may help explain the presence of an ecosystem that exists nowhere else.

During the winter, it was so cold that the horses’ nostrils would become clogged with ice from their own breath, and drivers had to stop periodically to clear them in order to keep the animals from suffocating.

In addition to being delightful words to say, umwelt and umgebung offer a framework for exploring and describing the experience of other creatures. In the umgebung of a city sidewalk, for example, a dog owner’s umwelt would differ greatly from that of her dog’s in that, while she might be keenly aware of a sale sign in a window, a policeman coming

in 1955, when I was still a student, some militia came to my cousin’s grandmother. Someone must have snitched on her and told them she was a shamanka because they took away her drums and burned them. She couldn’t take it and she hanged herself.” The drum is the membrane through which the shaman communicates with, and travels to, the spirit world. F

it is totally reasonable—righteous, even—to eat what you kill, whatever it may be. “I’ve tried tiger,” said Trush. “My whole family tried it. It’s quite unusual—slightly sweet, but I don’t care for it anymore—not since I saw a tiger eat a rotten cow in 2000. He ate the meat with worms and everything.”

most early attack reports are anecdotal accounts collected by travelers and, with the exception of the German lepidopterist whose remains were identified only by his butterfly net and jacket buttons,