Love bite or collar injury? Experts, officials spar over Rajasthan tigress’ wound

JAIPUR: A wound on the neck of a female tiger, recently acquired by Rajasthan’s Mukundra Hill Tiger reserve (MHTR), may have been caused by wrong installation of a radio collar, causing the rivet in the device to dig into the flesh. While the forest officials deny this theory, they believe the wound has been caused by a male tiger who dug his teeth into the tigress’s neck.
The two-and-a-half-yearold tigress MT2 was acquired from Ranthambore, and her wound was found infested with maggots.She was tranquilized on January 28 and treated at the reserve.
Tigress MT2 at Ranthambore before being relocated to MHTR (File photo)
The collar on the tigress was fixed at the Ranthambhore tiger reserve before she was relocated to the MHTR on December 18, 2018. Sources pointed out that no expert from Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, was present during the process.
Fresh photographs suggest that the injury could be a fallout of a radio collar wrongly installed. Forest officials have strongly denied the theory, but experts claim the marks have been made by anything but canines.

“Radio collars on tigers are padded and will never cause any injury to the animal. The injury marks on MT 2 were caused by a male tiger during mating,” said T Mohan Raj, district forest officer at MHTR.
Photograph suggests that the injury could be a fallout of a radio collar wrongly installed; (right) tigress MT2 in good times
‘The collar was wrongly installed’
“It does not appear that puncture marks on the tigress’s neck have been caused by canine. Injury cause by tiger canine is far more severe and bigger,” said Dr Akhilesh Mishra, wildlife veterinarian at Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.
Photograph suggests that the injury could be a fallout of a radio collar wrongly installed
Experts from the Rajasthan forest department, however, disagreed. “From what appears in the picture, the collar was wrongly installed. The ends of the rivets, as seen in the picture, should have been facing outside, and not in. Secondly the ‘V’ shaped injury appears to be caused by the area where the battery for the GPS on the collar is fixed.
But the marks are certainly not by canines,” said a retired official. The MT-2, has been responding well to the treatment and has not been collared yet.