A pregnant, 13 year old tigress walking through Sal forest in Pench Tiger Reserve, aka Pench National Park, Madhya Pradesh, India. This is T-15, known as Collarwali, the ‘Queen of Pench’, and the record holder for the most cubs ever born to a wild tigress. Her name comes from her radio collar which recorded her movements. It was put on her in 2009 and fell off in 2016, the year after I met her, though it hadn’t been transmitting for a few years before that.
At the time I saw her, in 2015, she was pregnant with four cubs (two male, two female), which was her sixth litter. She is a tiger Supermum, who gave birth to 29 cubs.
Collarwali was born in October 2005, the daughter two well-known tigers. Her mother was T-31 tigress known as Badi Mada. Her father was T-1 tiger, known as Charger because of his aggressive nature, named after the very famous and aggressive well-filmed tiger Charger from Bandhavgarh NP.
Badi Mada and the litter which included T-15 (before she had her collar) were the tiger family which featured in the BBC Wildlife Documentary Spy in the Jungle, which was narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
One of her daughters, T-4 known as Paddev, has already given birth to 15 cubs.
Supermum Collarwali died in January 2022.
This image is copyright © Liz Leyden, all rights reserved.
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