8/14/2019 Bear and Tiger
1/2
Bears and Tigers
Some 9 kms from Panna town, on the main road to Khajuraho, you
will find a narrow
cart road forking to the right, follow this road for about three
kms and you are at Ballaia-seha name given to a table-land with
steep sides - from where you can see a beautifulvalley below. The
most interesting feature here is a huge mound of loose boulders at
the
bottom of the cliff; nature has arranged these boulders in such
a fashion,, one over another, that a labyrinth of caves and tunnels
are formed beneath making this place aunique home for wild animals.
Here - both bears and tigers, who usually keep an eye outfor each
other, live in apparent harmony.
At the moment, I am going to narrate an incident that happened
almost 25 years ago. Mysenior colleague Mr. Pabla was then the
director of Panna National park and I had just
joined my first charge as DFO in the plantation division. We
mostly toured together and
in our forays into the jungle - Ballaia seha became a
destination that we would never ever bypass.
At Ballaia seha, on the edge of the plateau overlooking the
valley below, there is a curved parapet of stones, erected long
back by the rulers of the Panna, which the kings and their kin used
as a vantage point to watch wild animals and shoot them when the
animals cameto take shelter into the caverns or emerged from it.
For Mr. Pabla and I this place becamea school of learning the ways
of the wild often we sat for hours looking at the bears
andoccasionally at the tigers, a variety of birds, monitor lizards
and mongooses.
Once, Mr. Pabla brought his guests the MLA of Nagod, his wife
and his five year old
son. We reached Ballaia seha an hour before dusk and took our
perches inside the parapetand with our legs dangling over the cliff
and our eyes fixed on the rocks below, wewaited. We were lucky for
soon two bears emerged from the caverns and moved about.As we were
engrossed in our act suddenly the boy standing behind us shrieked,
all of usturned around at once and we saw a bear standing on its
hind legs just about 2 feet fromthe boy, towering over him. The
mother grabbed the boy and rushed to one corner whilewe gave
frantic shouts to drive the animal away; Mr. Pabla grabbed his
camera and ranafter the bear. The bear loped for a while and then
taking an animal track swiftly trotteddown into the valley. Later,
we all discussed the reason for the bear to have come up thehill to
us and the only plausible explanation which we could offer was that
the bear cameup the valley on to us attracted by the scent of the
strong perfume that Mrs. MLA had
worn that day.
Now, most of the old shikari conservationists who have weaved
yarn after yarn of junglelore vouch that bear has poor eyesight but
keen sense of smell, only one of them Kenneth Anderson - believed
that bears have a poor sense of smell, too. I personally
believe, from my experience and the habits of the bear, that it
does have a keen sense of smell as for finding food honey,
termites, fruits - it must have an intense sense of smell.
8/14/2019 Bear and Tiger
2/2
The polar bear are known to locate dead seals from some 16 miles
away. Scientists believe that bears sense of smell is 2,100 times
better than that of human beings.
Another assertion that Corbett had made in several of his
stories is about tiger having nosense of smell at all, which I find
difficult to believe for a top predator must have all its
senses enhanced; the very fact that a tiger depends on scent
markings for announcing itsterritory to others and for reproductive
reasons, is basis enough to believe that tiger has areasonably good
sense of smell. Recent studies have shown that tiger does have
sense of smell - mostly used for the above two reasons, while for
finding prey it largely uses itsheightened senses of sight and
hearing, As for bear scientists have concluded that bear has sight
as good as dog. Suhas Kumar 10.4.2009
