An old man in Hebei has raised tigers for 22 years, and his property has been eaten by tens of millions! How much can big cats eat in the wild?

In 2000, a man from Zhangjiakou, Hebei went to Inner Mongolia to do business. On the way, he saw a box with four kitten-like animals in the box.

The man thought it was just an ordinary kitten, so he brought all the four small animals home and raised them out of good intentions. However, the more they raised, the less they looked like cats. Later, it was identified that they were all Siberian tigers.

This man is none other than Li Mingyi, a very famous uncle who keeps tigers. So far, the first 4 little Siberian tigers have produced many offspring under his efforts, some of them have been donated to the zoo, and the rest are still kept. In the artificial breeding base of wild animals that he specially bid for raising tigers.

The artificial breeding base for wild animals is located in a deep mountain in Zhangjiakou City. In addition to the Siberian tiger, Li Mingyi also introduced African lions.

There are currently 73 Siberian tigers in the base, including 65 adults and 8 juveniles, and 21 African lions.

Recently, Li Mingyi asked the media for help. He said that these animals eat more than 1,000 catties of meat every day, and it costs 10,000 yuan per day to eat them alone. Since raising tigers, it has cost tens of millions of yuan.

Due to his advanced age and cancer diagnosis last year, he is no longer able to take care of these animals.

Although he has also donated Siberian tigers to the zoo, it is far from solving the problem of excess tigers in the base, so he hopes to find a home for these small animals through the media, and also hopes to get valuable suggestions from netizens.

Tigers are currently the largest cat animals, while lions come in second. Many people may have wondered what these animals eat in the wild?

If less than 100 big cats in the base eat more than 1,000 kilograms of meat every day, can they really catch so much prey in the wild?

Wild prey of tigers and lions

From small pet cats to large Siberian tigers, all cats are highly carnivorous animals, they cannot digest other food other than meat, so they can only survive by preying on other animals in the wild.

However, what these large cats eat is much more complicated than we think. They are not picky about food at all, and they will eat any food that appears in front of them and they feel they are capable of taking down.

In the field observation, lions and tigers have basically the same food habits. They will eat common small animals such as birds, frogs, snakes, and fish. Some teams even observed that some tigers would squat beside the river to catch fish.

For the predation of large animals, the choices of the two big cats are basically the same. About 90% of the food source for both is ungulates. For tigers, it is wild boar, goat, deer and other ungulates in mountain forests. , while lions are grassland hoofed animals such as zebras, giraffes, and buffaloes.

Ungulates are herbivores, and the risk of predation on them is relatively low, so basically all carnivores prey on them.

When food is scarce, the two big cats will also choose more dangerous animals to attack. For tigers, they will take risks to prey on bears, while lions will attack dangerous animals such as cheetahs and hyenas.

Because meat spoils very quickly in the wild, both big cats actually have the ability to eat scavengers. At the same time, because both animals are at the top of the food chain, they often snatch food from other carnivores.

In addition, both lions and tigers have been observed to graze on grasses and wild fruits, especially in captivity. The researchers believe that the fiber in grasses and wild fruits can help them digest and relieve their stomach pains. Therefore, these big cats in captivity showed a tendency to graze more frequently, which may be related to the fact that the food they eat is not fresh enough.

How much food do you eat every year?

Judging from the public data, the daily food intake of captive lions and tigers is basically the same. After all, the body size of the two animals is not too different. In captivity, both of them consume about 5-10 kilograms of meat every day. , roughly equivalent to 4 to 7 percent of their body weight.

There are nearly a hundred lions and tigers in Li Mingyi's base. Based on this amount of food, he really needs about 1,000 catties of meat every day, which is indeed a lot of expenses.

However, in the wild, the food intake of these two kinds of big cats is much larger than that of the captive ones, and the food intake of tigers will be much more than that of lions, which is reflected in the territory of the two kinds of big cats.

In the case of sufficient food, a territory of 20 square kilometers is enough to support a lion colony, and even in the case of insufficient food, the territory of the lion colony will not exceed 400 square kilometers.

A tiger's territory may even exceed an entire lion group. We often hear that one mountain cannot tolerate two tigers. In fact, a tiger may travel back and forth between several hills, and these hills are all the territory of a tiger.

Under normal circumstances, the territory of tigers can reach 60 to 100 square kilometers, but in the case of insufficient food, tigers will walk around almost like migratory animals, and their crossing range may even reach 1,000 square kilometers, which is almost equivalent to a county. area.

The reason why tigers need more resources is because tigers are far less successful at hunting than lions, they spend most of the day on the move, wasting energy in failure.

Tigers are solitary hunters, with a measly 5 to 10 percent success rate against large animals, compared to 20 to 30 percent for lions that live in groups.

On average, a lion only needs to hunt 15 large animals a year to survive, but tigers need to reach about 50, and they hunt a large animal almost every week.

Since wild animals never know when their next meal will be, in addition to preying on large animals, both kinds of big cats will see what and eat what, for small animals they don't need much effort, and the hunting success rate Also higher.

When the hunt is successful, the food intake of tigers and lions at one time is actually very amazing. They can spend almost a few hours eating a whole prey without any leftovers. Tigers can eat about 50 kilograms of meat at one time. Since the lions hunt in groups, each lion gets a little less.

In general, lions and tigers prey on large herbivores in the wild at roughly the same amount of food provided by breeders in captivity, but in the wild they eat a lot of "snacks" every day.

at last

Since both kinds of big cats mainly get water through food, they are very resistant to starvation, and they can last for up to 1 month without eating at a time.

This is the advantage of large animals. They can store more energy in their bodies for emergencies. After all, survival in the wild is full of uncertainties.

But their larger size also makes them eat a lot of food even if they do nothing. It is really not easy for Li Mingyi to raise nearly 100 big cats, and it is amazing.