Tiger Island TV Series

Calling all tiger lovers!  

There’s a new two-part series starting on BBC1 on Sunday, 7th June (7:15pm GMT) called Tiger Island. The two episodes follows two Bengal tiger mothers and their cubs.  They’re on an island in the forests of western Nepal.   You can meet the tigers (as it were) here – Goma, Mala, Jugini and Bandheil.  There are five cubs.

Nepal's tiger population has trebled since 2010, but raising cubs is a challenging task and the success in tripling numbers is causing some human-tiger conflict.

Nonetheless, Tiger Island should be amazing viewing! Using thermal-imaging cameras mounted on vehicles, camera traps and drones (sometimes flying three or four at once), scientists and film makers saw behaviour never seen before.  They could tell tell the tigers apart from their stripes, because no two tigers have the same pattern. 

Anna Dimitriadis, Dan O’Neill and Max Hug Williams took over 1,000 hours filming the tigers.   When they were filming on foot, the amazing sisters Sushila and Manju Mahatara kept them safe and you can meet them here.

Tigers are supposed to be solitary - but the filming showed two tiger mothers sharing and looking after each other's cubs, giving each other a chance to rest. And they enjoyed social exchanges with others of their species.  Mind you, be prepared - the two episodes aren’t all sweetness and life, however.  A male tiger kills two cubs, so we’d best all be prepared.  

Nonetheless, this sounds like an exciting series.   I can’t wait!  Find out more from BBC iPlayer here. You can also view a couple of clips there, as well, and there's a You Tube video to watch, too from the amazing BBC Earth, which I've shared below.

The beautiful photo at the top of this blog is by Sushanta Rokka on Unsplash. Thank you, Sushanta!