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It's hard to see how big a Bengal tiger is. A male could reach up to 258 kilograms. That is a spectacularly large animal. Pretty crazy. I mean, if it smacked you around the head, you wouldn't have a head. Hi, I'm Dan O'Neal. I'm a wildlife biologist, broadcaster, and filmmaker. And I'm working on a new series called Tiger Island. Today, I'm going to watch and react to an unseen bit of footage that's not in the show to give you a bit of insight into what it was like filming in Nepal. I'm really excited about this because this was very cool and it didn't make it into the show, but this is when Sushilla, the expert ranger and the only reason I'm alive and I go to inspect a
tiger's kill that has been left. So, when we knew from the drones that this tiger had left the site, it was a perfect opportunity to go and inspect the kill site to see what it looks like. And it's very cool. And Sushilla is walking very confidently, me a little less so. Chugy and her right there. They've just made a kill. So, what's cool? Just watching her from the sky. This is something you'd never be able to see. A mother and her cub eating a freshlymade kill. If we walk down this forest side, Max is on the other side of the bank. We might be able to get eyes on the cup for the first time.
Tigers have one of the coolest tongues of any animal in the world. They have these spiny structures called filform paplet on their tongue. And it's these thousands of comb like spines which basically when the tiger's licking that prey, it'll strip away all the hair, it will strip away the skin and allow the tiger to access the meat underneath. It's pretty incredible. This is such a good opportunity to go in and check out the kel, see what she's taken. But we've got to be really careful because she is somewhere in the area. We know right now she's about 350 400 m in that direction. So, we're safe,
but there have been a couple of deer calls in this direction. So, we need to just check and make sure the area is safe before we go in. But yeah, it's an opportunity we can't miss. Look at Sushilla. One of the most fearless people I've ever met in my life. She's what keeps us safe. She lives in this environment. She spent her whole life, 30 plus years, living in this environment alongside elephants, rhinos, and tigers. And that little stick, that's it. I'll tell you, there was a time when we were all sat in camp and a rhino started walking towards our camp. And they're dangerous. I think tigers are dangerous. Elephants and rhinos, they're responsible for the most
wild kills of people in this environment. And Susilla, she walked out from camp with a little stick and just slammed it on the ground, screaming at this rhino, and it left. This is something we'd never usually do cuz if a cat can see us coming in, it's a chance you could bump the cat away from the kill and it wouldn't come back. But we know from the drone team that she's far off in this direction, far away from any line of sight to us. It's just so special. This is one of my favorite things about this production. It's very rare that any field biologist is going to have this much support to be able to explore a place like this.
Incredible privilege to be able to walk on foot in tiger territory with relative safety. Is that hog dear? Oh, hog dear. It's odd. The speed that an animal that size can eat is pretty incredible. Hog deer, it's not the largest deer there by no means, but hog dear is not I mean it's a pretty big animal and in 3540 minutes to eat half of an animal like that. It's pretty impressive. It's hard to see how big a Bengal tiger is. A female could be 100 to 160 kg. A male could reach up to 258 kg. That is a spectacularly large animal. Pretty crazy. I mean, if it smacked you around the head, you wouldn't have a head.
I imagine the fact that they killed it probably like 354 minutes ago. It's almost half. Mhm. The speed is incredible, isn't it? Yeah. I really want to just quickly check out the kill to see how she killed it. Another thing you don't do, talk about mistaken identity is the reason that tigers kill. So going up to a tiger's kill like this and then crouching down. Tigers are obligate ambush hunters. So what they do is they hear sounds, they stalk, they get very, very close to their prey. They have a very powerful grappling force that allows them to jump onto prey, hold it down, and if it's small,
they'll bite at the back of the neck, severing the spine for an immediate kill. Or if it's larger, they'll come to the front and kill through asphyxiation. But it happens incredibly quickly. And once the tiger gets into its stalk and ambush and hunting behavior, that's kind of it for you. What you want to do to avoid being attacked by tigers really is just be in their field of awareness. If the cat can see you, it's not really going to come for you. This is sort of long grass where the cat's stashed its food and then crouching down to a sort of come kill me position. But we know that the cat's not there. But this is how people get killed. You know, you crouch down in long grass. The cat
doesn't know what it is. Thinks it's probably a deer. jumps and by the time it's made its kill and realize what you are, it's too late. So if uh normally one tiger and then enough for the few days, but here Jugni and she have a cop and that maybe they can finish until this evening like 1 hour ago they kill and like almost half eaten. So maybe they finish until this evening I guess. This is my first kill size fidget spen from distance. I never seen that much close. You've never seen one this close before?
Yeah. This vessel. That's cool. Like the fact that Sushilla is the first time visiting a kill site. Being able to facilitate new experiences for the local team safely is super cool because obviously we're learning an unbelievable amount from Sushilla and Mju and the rest of the team there. But it's just cool to have like ability from our technology to give something back. This is already amazing and maybe seal somewhere close. So now I think we should go from this area. She saw deer and then come here is crash down and she's waiting to come dear very close and then she jumps deer over there. I think that thing happened like hour ago.
Her ability to read the ground is just second to none. like walking around and you might not see something that she's already read the whole story and she's been collecting all of the information, but it's just wicked to see how Sushila's skills can tell us so much about the environment. I mean, it's so cool. She really does know everything about tigers and everything about the environment. Look, that must have been where she jumped, right? Really, really deep. That's the last footprint before the kill. Just seeing the aftermath of something so brutal and so fast and so powerful. That's the end.
Woo. Yeah, I love it so much. One other thing I'll say is just looking at it back just brings back how exciting and amazing this was and it was the most incredible team. There were 17 of us on the ground working on this production. We had such an incredible time making this program. So just watching it back, it's so nostalgic and I'm jealous of both Sushilla and I getting to experience it there because it just was such a magical place. It is just the most incredible experience being there on the ground and seeing what it's really like. Amazing. I can't wait for everyone to see it. It's really good.
I've been given some quickfire questions about our new series, Tiger Island, and I haven't seen any of these, so bear with me if I can't answer. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I had to run back and read papers and like call colleagues. I mean, tigers are solitary animals. Never would I have expected adjacent female in a territory next to another female, both have cubs, to come together and for one female to leave her cubs with another tigress, and then her seemingly be absolutely fine, crashing and looking after all of them, walking away from the area, crossing a river with five cubs in tow, three of which
are not her own and a vastly different age from her own cubs, only to come back and then to see those two tigers with their cubs back where they're supposed to be in following days. That's effectively hub sharing. The reason we haven't uh been able to see these behaviors until now is because these animals are hiding. They've evolved to hide. They live in dense undergrowth. They're obligate ambush hunters, which means they only show themselves at the final moments before they kill something. And every other situation, they want to stay hidden. Camera traps allowed us to get into those worlds early on, but they're very limited. You know, we put a camera trap in a very specific location trying to
find a very specific thing. And often that small plane of vision, that image that the camera trap is showing us, only video has come out recently. Former camera traps only showed photographs. And you can't see detailed behaviors in these very limited images. Now, being able to use drones, as we have in this series, far away with long lenses that can zoom really effectively so that the cat can't even hear the drone. It doesn't know that it's there. And therefore, they're showing these really intimate social behaviors, cub rearing behaviors that nobody will ever be able to see without doing it from the sky because they do those behaviors and they show they exhibit those behaviors when
nothing else is seeing them. Yeah, for sure. Anna, for example, is trying to get those most beautiful images that best showcase the tiger and their behavior. Whereas for me, I'm looking at it in terms of how do we have the longest uninterrupted vision of an animal and record it because all of this is data. We're seeing behaviors that we still don't understand a lot about. And for me, that's what's most exciting about this. It's seeing what these kinds of programs can give us and the collaboration which is really important between film making and science how cold it was honestly I should have known but it was quite cold and I was not prepared and not a lot of us were prepared the temperature changes so much
in that habitat and then getting onto the island it's totally wild you can hear birds everywhere it's so like vibrant and full of life and loud with wildlife, but there's this thick mat of mist across the whole island. The first thing I noticed in Nepal was just how utterly beautiful it is. And I think a lot of people when you hear Nepal, you might think about the Himalayas, high mountains, Everest, but actually this terriarch landscape that is home to such a thriving population of incredibly rare and beautiful animals is such a special part of the country. And I'm so excited for people to learn more about it because it is just utterly beautiful.
Rhinos, elephants, tigers, all living together. Yeah, it's very, very cool. This is fun. I want to answer all of them. Let's spend all day doing this. H I mean, it's pretty intense. Tigers are cropuscular animals, which means that they're most active at dawn and dusk, which means if we're going to see them moving, we also have to be most active at dawn and dusk. So, we're up super early out there with all of our equipment lugging across rivers, walking through dense terrain trying to find these tigers. And we've got to be there earlier than their most active times anyway because when we get there, we
have to locate them. And we're flying up thermal drones at first light. And then we'd like nap during the middle of the day when it is sweltering. So, it's like extremely hot in the middle of the day, kind of chilly in the morning. Every sense is being battered at all times, but it's so worth it. the experiences you have. You might have the most difficult day of your life and then see some spectacular behavior that maybe no one's ever seen before. And yeah, it makes it worth it tenfold. We were in drone camp and Anna was following Mara and her incredibly adorable three cubs and this new male came onto the island and that's terrifying because tigers are sexually territorial. A male will have a territory range and within that
territory range you might get two or three or sometimes four females with their own ranges. But males don't cross over with other males. When a cat comes into a new area, if it's able to take over a territory of a male, the first thing that it will attempt to do if they're a cub of the resident females, the male will try to kill them. Because if the male wants to sire their own offspring with those females, they need to make sure that they bring them back into estrus and they're not defending a territory of another male's cubs. And that immediately makes us terrified because the most dangerous time of a tiger's life is when it's very, very young. And huge numbers of young tigers
get killed by males. We had to go to bed not know what was going to happen overnight. And that was absolutely the scariest part because it takes it from making a program or feeling excited about being in such a magical place to suddenly realizing this is the reality of these animals lives. So it is just a horrible scary moment that we might wake up the next day and all of our cubs that we've loved so much and watch grow up might be gone. We wouldn't have been able to do what we did without the local community support from the drivers, the fixers, and obviously Sushilla and Mju, the expert rangers that we work with. We'd just be lost without them.
I want people to feel there's hope for endangered species, that the world's most iconic big cat is on the rise. I hope that we can transport people on their Sunday night uh to a special world that actually exists and remind young people that these species are still out there and pursuing careers in conservation and science mean that one day you might be out there looking at tigers in the wild and studying them as well.
