The tiger is one of the world’s most recognizable apex predators, sitting at the top of the food chain across diverse Asian ecosystems, from the Russian Far East to the jungles of India. Due to its size and strength, a healthy adult tiger has no natural predators actively seeking it as prey. To understand what truly “hunts” a tiger, one must look beyond the simple predator-prey dynamic to the complex array of threats that shorten its life, including natural hazards and, most significantly, human actions.
Apex Status and Predation on Juveniles
The “apex predator” designation confirms that a fully grown, healthy tiger faces no threat from other animals hunting it for food. Exceptions apply almost exclusively to the most vulnerable age class: cubs and juveniles. Cub mortality is high, with approximately half of all wild tiger cubs failing to survive past their first two years.
Predation on the young is typically opportunistic, occurring when the mother is away or the cubs are poorly hidden. Other carnivores, such as leopards or packs of Asiatic wild dogs (dholes), may take advantage of this vulnerability. While dholes rarely prey on tigers, a large, coordinated pack can sometimes overwhelm an unprotected litter or a lone, injured female.
Conflict with Other Tigers
Intraspecific conflict—between members of the same species—is a major natural cause of death for adult tigers, particularly males. These lethal engagements are not predation but intense territorial and social competition. Fights are primarily driven by disputes over territory boundaries, access to mating females, or competition for resources.
Conflicts are often brutal and can result in severe injuries that lead to death, even if the tiger is not killed immediately. Where human activity has fragmented habitats, increased population density and resource competition intensify these aggressive encounters. Establishing a territory often involves confrontations with established males, accounting for high mortality rates among young, dispersing sub-adult males.
Danger During Hunting Large Prey
A significant cause of mortality for adult tigers comes from the animals they hunt, which can fatally injure the predator during the struggle. These deaths are accidental consequences of the hunt, not the prey actively hunting the tiger. The Indian gaur, the world’s largest wild cattle, poses a particularly high risk; adult males can weigh up to 3,300 pounds and possess sharp horns.
While tigers successfully hunt gaur, documented cases exist where the gaur has successfully defended itself, often goring the tiger to death. Large wild water buffalo and wild boars are similarly formidable adversaries whose mass, horns, or tusks can inflict mortal wounds. Even smaller prey, like sloth or brown bears, can fight back fiercely when defending their young or a kill, leading to fatal encounters for the tiger.
The Primary Threat is Human Activity
While natural threats exist, the overwhelming factor driving the decline of the tiger is human activity, which poses the only existential threat to the species. This threat operates through several mechanisms, the most immediate of which is illegal poaching. Tigers are hunted for their body parts—including bones, skins, and claws—which fuel demand in illegal markets, often for use in traditional medicines or as status symbols.
Habitat Loss and Fragmentation
Habitat loss and fragmentation are devastating forces, as the clearing of forests for agriculture, logging, and infrastructure shrinks the tiger’s home range. Tigers require large, interconnected territories for survival and breeding. When habitat is divided, it isolates populations, leading to reduced genetic diversity and increased competition.
This loss of space forces tigers into closer proximity with human settlements, creating frequent and often fatal human-tiger conflict. Conflict arises when tigers prey on domestic livestock, leading to retaliatory killings by local communities using poison or traps. These killings, along with poaching, are considered human-induced mortalities and account for a large proportion of non-natural tiger deaths. Ultimately, the true “apex predator” of the tiger is the cumulative impact of human encroachment, which destroys their environment, depletes their prey, and directly targets the animal itself.