Two amateur videos of close encounters between man and beast -- one, a tiger terrorising tourists in Nagpur and the other, a lion jumping into a creek in Gujarat -- have gone viral over the last few days.
In the first incident, a tiger approaches an open top jeep at the Umred Karhandla wildlife sanctuary in Nagpur, and as three terrified tourists including a child watch, proceeds to play with the rear view mirror.
A couple of agonising minutes later the big cat slowly walked back into the forest without so much as a glance at the people inside the vehicle.
In the second video, a lion which strayed into the Jafrabad coast in Amreli district, jumped into a creek on seeing a crowd of people.
{{/usCountry}}In the second video, a lion which strayed into the Jafrabad coast in Amreli district, jumped into a creek on seeing a crowd of people.
{{/usCountry}}The sight of the lion swimming across the creek caused more people to gather, before forest officials tranquilised the animal and sent it back to the forest.
Man-animal encounters, which are getting more frequent because of shrinking wildlife habitats, do not always end so peacefully.
Last Saturday, a man was mauled to death by a tiger in a buffer zone of Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh’s Umaria district. Poachers and villagers have caused the death of more than a hundred lions during the last couple of years in the areas in and around Gir forest.