That’s an interesting story. Yeah I would say it’s a lot mentally simpler for the tiger starting because there are no morals or social norms to weigh. Second, revenge often has an element of justice and/or cruelty between humans: you want to make the other person suffer, make them feel the same or worse. There’s a theory of mind there, which in the tiger’s case it’s not obvious. For the tiger, there’s a threat that needs to be dealt with, period.
The stalking behaviour is just natural for cats. Seeing how domestic cats are so well acquainted with their territory that they know where to sit and wait for prey to show up, and they know where to look for other trespassing cats, I’m not surprised the tiger already knew about the human, he just probably underestimated it.
That’s an interesting story. Yeah I would say it’s a lot mentally simpler for the tiger starting because there are no morals or social norms to weigh. Second, revenge often has an element of justice and/or cruelty between humans: you want to make the other person suffer, make them feel the same or worse. There’s a theory of mind there, which in the tiger’s case it’s not obvious. For the tiger, there’s a threat that needs to be dealt with, period.
The stalking behaviour is just natural for cats. Seeing how domestic cats are so well acquainted with their territory that they know where to sit and wait for prey to show up, and they know where to look for other trespassing cats, I’m not surprised the tiger already knew about the human, he just probably underestimated it.
Yeah, probably less “revenge” in a human sense, and more “treating a tiger that badly drives you way up on the tiger’s ‘prey priority list’”