lisamorgendunst{at}yahoo.com (Lisa Morgendunst) wrote in news:btca2u$5sa$1
{at}darwin.ediacara.org:

> I was reading a book about big cats. It says a Siberian tiger can
> easily kill and devour a brown bear twice its size. All this time, I
> thought the brown bear(aka Grizzly in North America)was the baddest
> land carnivore.

I at first thought it highly unlikely that tigers would feed on brown 
bears, but this does appear to be true. However most of the references I 
found indicated that tigers might prey on bears their own size or 
slightly larger, but probably not twice their size. And I also saw one 
reference that indicated that some very large Asian brown bears would 
kill and eat tigers. So the very largest brown bears are still probably 
the "baddest" land carnivore.
 
> I know cats are lb for lb. the strongest carnivores next to weasels.
> But, I had no idea how strong, ferocious, and deadly a tiger was until
> I read about their superiority over bears.

In general lean muscle is lean muscle - so one animal will not be 
stronger "lb for lb" than another of similar size based on muscle mass. 
What does differ between animals is fast twitch vs slow twitch muscle, % 
body fat, and skeletal differences that affect how much leverage a 
certain amount of muscle can provide. Since bears are omnivores, and most 
hibernate and therefore must store body fat,it is understandable that a 
tiger can kill a brown bear of similar weight.There are also well known 
scaling laws that make smaller animals in general stronger than large 
animals on a weight basis - but this disappears when the scaling factor 
is taken into account.

 
> I think bears are stronger overall but tigers have more speed and
> ferocity. A swift attack of tiger's paws will likely blind a bear.
> Then, the tiger will attack and sink its teeth into the bear and so
> the bear will be helpless. A brown bear's main weapon is the use of
> its paws but a fast tiger will evade those blows. And, when a tiger
> has bitten the bear and holds on, the bear can't use the blows against
> the tiger.

As far as I know and from my brief research on the net, a tiger kills its 
prey by getting a stranglehold on the throat with its jaws. I don't see 
how this type of attack would render a bear helpless, so I would think 
the tiger would still take some punishment from the bear's paws. However 
I did not see any detailed accounts of how tigers go about killing bears.


Yours,

Bill Morse
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