Cat Strength

Feline superpowers

For their size, cats are the strongest of all animals. Nature designed them this way so that they can overcome and kill animals larger than themselves. In fact, the leopard-Asian or African-is believed to be the strongest animal in the world for its size.

Jim Corbett, who spent half his life hunting man-eaters, writes of an example of the strength of a big cat. A medium-sized leopard weighing about 110 pounds killed an Indian villager, a man who weighed about 120 pounds, then picked him up and carried him for two miles without putting him down.

The strength of an adult tiger is equally extraordinary. Some years ago, on a photo safari with a client in the jungles of southwestern Nepal, I found the body of a domestic buffalo killed by a big tiger. The kill, with about fifty pounds of meat eaten from its rump by the tiger, was lying in the bottom of a twelve-foot-deep ravine with near vertical sides; it was a huge animal, weighing at least a thousand pounds. As the light in the ravine was poor, and not suitable for photography, I decided to drag the carcass out and place it where, when the tiger came back to eat more of it, my client could get a better picture.

From a nearby village I commandeered thirteen men, and, after attaching ropes to the carcass, the fifteen of us tried to drag the animal up the steep side of the ravine. But in spite of strenuous efforts we failed to move it an inch. With the light fading, we gave up and went back to camp.

The next day I went again to the ravine with my client. The tiger had come in the night and, with a single, mighty effort, had picked up the dead buff and taken it straight up the side of the ravine and into the jungle. Tracking it, we found that the tiger had dragged its half-ton prey for half a mile before stopping to eat from it again.-Peter Byrne

Copyright Sports Afield, Inc. Dec 2004
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