A tiger in India with a taste for human flesh has been shot dead after a two-year hunt. According to the New York Times , the female tiger, named T-1 by forest rangers, is believed to have killed at least 13 people before she was finally shot dead on Friday.
The hunters were supposed to use tranquilizers. Officials hoped to take the animal alive because she has two cubs. The six-year-old cat, however, reportedly roared and charged at the open-air patrol vehicle after she was hit by a tranquilizer dart at short range, prompting a hunter to shoot her with a fatal bullet to the belly.
The tigress is believed to have begun killing people in 2016, leading to a massive hunt that involved hundreds of people, heat-seeking drones, remote cameras, and a group of sharpshooters mounted on the backs of specially trained elephants.
Hunters also used a popular Calvin Klein perfume to snare the animal. A bottle of Obsession cologne was used to lure the animal before it was fatally shot. Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men has civetone, a compound originally derived from the scent glands of a civet but is now produced synthetically. Civetone reportedly drives big cats wild. They roll around in it, take huge sniffs and smell it.
“Whatever is in that, cats love it. They really, really roll and cheek-rub and they just look to be in heaven,” feline expert Louise Ginman told Scientific American .
Last month, rangers sprayed some Obsession on bushes in the hopes of drawing the tiger out. On Friday afternoon, they again squirted some perfume and tiger urine in an area where the killer tiger was believed to be hiding. After a few hours, the villagers saw the tiger trotting down the road and authorities dispatched teams to do an evacuation. Hunters eventually spotted the tiger and identified it as T-1 based on its stripes. Tiger stripes serve as fingerprints that can identify an animal, since each of the patterns is unique.
Villagers rejoiced at the news of the tiger’s death with fireworks, parties and candies, but animal rights advocates condemned the killing of the animal, describing it as cold blooded murder. The hunters, however, defended the decision to kill the animal, saying it was done in self defense. “We would have lost a few men had we tried to save her,” said Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, the father of the hunter that killed the tiger.
