Watch a Powerful Tiger Charge Straight Into Water and Catch Its Lunch With Surgical Precision

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Key Points

• Houscats may be notorious for their fierce aversion to water, but their bigger feline relatives have no such fear.
• In this stunning footage, you can watch as a powerful tiger makes quick work of taking down a fawn that wanders away from its mother into a stream.
• The resemblance to a pet cat chasing a toy is both uncanny and slightly terrifying, as this kitty is obviously as happy as can be after making its kill.

Tigers are ambush predators. Thanks to their bold stripes, they can remain hidden in the grass until unsuspecting prey wanders past. In this clip, the tiger was hidden near some water – it was apparently filmed at Tadoba National Park which is one of India’s 47 project tiger reserves. It is located in the Chandrapur district of Maharashtra state. Watch the full video of a tiger hunting what looks like a species of deer with great success!

Tiger Has No Fear of the Water

The young deer in this clip makes a huge tactical error! Its mother darts off to the right as soon as they sense a predator is approaching. The fawn, however, heads into the water – possibly assuming that this will be the safest place to escape. Clearly, the fawn didn’t get the memo about how good tigers are at swimming!

As we see here, tigers are not put off by a bit of water. They may be big cats but they are very willing to pursue prey into the water and they are surprisingly good swimmers. Here, the tiger soon catches up with the fawn by running through the shallow water and then leaps on it. The fawn is dragged under the deeper water and for a split second, both animals disappear from view. When they emerge above the water, the tiger has the fawn’s neck grasped in its mouth. The fawn struggles feebly but we all know how this is going to end!

Unlike most domestic cats, tigers like the water. They go into the water to cool down and swim for pleasure but don’t completely submerge themselves that often. You will see tigers crossing rivers to get to new hunting grounds and pursuing prey into the water where they may find it easier to trap it.

Supreme Predators

Tigers are the largest feline on the planet. They are native species of Asia and Eurasia and are solitary hunters. Their preferred food is deer but they also catch water buffalo, antelope, and pigs. Some can even catch leopards and crocodiles. They are large animals that need a lot of meat and have been known to consume 75 pounds of meat in one sitting.

There are several subspecies of tigers, and they all have slightly different diets, depending on what prey is available in their habitats. As far as origin, tigers are less related to lions and leopards and more related to the endangered snow leopard. They have very few predators, but among them are humans, elephants, and larger buffalos.

This fawn turned out to be quite an easy catch.