Why Tiger Attacks on Humans In India || Human Wildlife Conflicts

There are many reasons why tigers attack humans, they are probably injured or infirm and have to rely on easy prey and humans and tigers are being forced together because of increased human population and therefore there is human-tiger conflict.
If a human comes too close and surprises a sleeping tiger, a feeding tiger, or a tigress with her cubs, the tiger will attack and injure or kill a human. Tigers also attack humans in a case of "mistaken identity" (for example, if a human is crouching while collecting firewood, or cutting grass) and sometimes when a tourist gets too close. Some also recommend not riding a bicycle, or running in a region where tigers live, in order to not provoke their chase. Peter Byrne wrote about an Indian postman who was working on foot for many years without any problems with resident tigers, but was chased by a tiger soon after he started riding a bicycle for his work.] While on average there are approximately 85 or fewer people killed and injured by tigers each year, India has seen sharper increases in tiger attacks, as was the case in 2014 and 2015 due to urban expansion into the tiger’s natural habitat.Many human fatalities and injuries are due to incidents at zoos, or to the man-eating tigers in India.

In some cases, tigers will change their natural diet to become man-eaters. This is usually due to a tiger being incapacitated by a gunshot wound or porcupine quills, or some other factors, such as health issues and disabilities. In such cases, the animal's inability to take traditional prey forces it to stalk humans, which are less appetizing but much easier to chase, overpower and kill; this was the case with the man-eating tigress of Champawat, which was believed to have begun eating villagers at least partially in response to crippling tooth injuries.As tigers in Asia often live in close proximity to humans, tigers have killed more people than any other big cat. Between 1876 and 1912, tigers killed 33,247 people in British India.

It could be argued that there is no place for the tiger, any more, in India. I mention India because it is the country in which there is the greatest population of tigers. They are Bengal tigers. The Indian human population is expanding rapidly and has done for a long time. There are 1.4 billion people in India. It’s a big country but the population has grown by about 60 million in the last three years! This is about the population of the UK – in three years. As the human population grows, the tiger population decreases. But the two species are put together unnaturally.

Man-eaters have been a recurrent problem in India, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal. There, some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. However, there have been mentions of man eaters in old Indian literature so it appears that after British occupied India and built roads in to forests and brought the tradition of ’shikaar’, man eaters became a nightmare come alive. Even though tigers usually avoid elephants, they have been known to jump on an elephant's back and severely injure the mahout riding on the elephant's back. Kesri Singh mentioned a case when a fatally wounded tiger attacked and killed the hunter who wounded it while the hunter was on the back of an elephant. Most man-eating tigers are eventually captured, shot or poisone