Bengal Tiger
The Bengal tiger, also called the royal Bengal tiger, is the tiger of the Indian subcontinent and by far the most numerous tiger population left in the wild. National counts add up to roughly 4,400 tigers: about 3,682 in India (2022), 429 in Nepal (2026), 131 in Bhutan (2023) and 125 in the Bangladeshi Sundarbans (2024). It lives in an unusually wide range of habitats, from the dry teak forests of Rajasthan and the sal forests and tall grasslands of the Terai to the tidal mangroves of the Sundarbans and the mountain forests of Bhutan, where camera traps have photographed tigers at about 4,300 meters. The coat is deep orange with bold black stripes and a pale belly, and no two tigers share the same pattern. Rare color forms also come from this population, including the white tiger and the black tigers of Similipal. Males are much larger than females and can bring down gaur and water buffalo, though chital, sambar and wild boar make up most of the diet. Adults live alone in large territories, and the tiger is the national animal of both India and Bangladesh.
What is a royal Bengal tiger?
The royal Bengal tiger and the Bengal tiger are the same animal: the tiger that lives in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. The name comes from Bengal, the region around the Ganges delta that is now split between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, and the word royal is used above all in Bangladesh and eastern India, where the animal is a national emblem. Scientists call it Panthera tigris tigris. For a long time it was treated as one of several tiger subspecies, but a 2017 review by the IUCN Cat Specialist Group grouped all mainland Asian tigers into that single subspecies and left the island tigers of Sumatra, and the extinct ones of Java and Bali, as Panthera tigris sondaica. Under that view the Bengal tiger is a population rather than a separate subspecies, though the name is still used everywhere and the animals of the subcontinent remain genetically distinct. Whatever the label, it is the tiger most people picture: about three out of four wild tigers on Earth live in its range. It is the national animal of India, chosen in 1973, and of Bangladesh, where the national cricket team is simply called the Tigers.
How big is a Bengal tiger?
The Bengal tiger is one of the two largest cats in the world, together with the Amur or Siberian tiger. Adult males usually measure about 2.7 to 3.1 meters from nose to tail tip, of which the tail is close to a meter, and weigh about 180 to 260 kilograms. Females are clearly smaller, about 2.4 to 2.65 meters long and 100 to 160 kilograms. Standing on all fours, a big male is close to a meter tall at the shoulder. Size changes across the range: tigers of the Terai in Nepal and northern India are among the heaviest, while those of the Sundarbans mangroves are much lighter, and a study there found females of only about 75 to 80 kilograms. The heaviest Bengal tiger ever reported is a male shot in northern India in 1967 and said to weigh about 389 kilograms, but that animal had just eaten and the figure is not considered reliable; most weights recorded by scientists stay below 275 kilograms. The coat is short and orange with black stripes, white patches around the eyes and a white belly, and each tiger has its own stripe pattern, which is how camera trap surveys tell individuals apart.
White Bengal tigers: why some tigers are white
A white tiger is not a separate species or subspecies. It is a Bengal tiger carrying two copies of a recessive gene that switches off the orange pigment. A 2013 study traced it to a single change in a gene called SLC45A2, so the tiger keeps its black or dark brown stripes on a white coat and usually has blue eyes. It is not an albino, which would have no stripes and pink eyes. White tigers were always very rare in the wild and were reported mostly from central and eastern India. Almost every white tiger alive today descends from Mohan, a white male caught as a cub in 1951 in the forests of Rewa, in what is now Madhya Pradesh. He was bred with his own daughter to get more white cubs, and zoos repeated that inbreeding for decades, which caused crossed eyes, cleft palates, spinal problems and early deaths. The last white tiger known in the wild was shot in 1958. That is why the frequent searches for white Bengal tiger habitat have a sad answer: none live free today. Many zoos and conservation groups now refuse to breed them, because they add nothing to saving wild tigers.
Black and golden Bengal tigers
Two other unusual colors appear in wild Bengal tigers, and both are linked to small, isolated populations. The so called black tigers live in Similipal Tiger Reserve, in the Indian state of Odisha. They are not fully black: their stripes are so wide that they merge into dark bands over the back and flanks, a pattern known as pseudomelanism. A 2021 study by the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru found that a single change in a gene called Taqpep causes it. Among the tigers sampled in Similipal, more than half of the gene copies carried that change, while it was missing from nearly 400 tigers tested in other parts of India. The researchers explained it by the reserve's isolation and inbreeding, since very few tigers arrive from outside. The golden tigers, sometimes called golden tabby or strawberry tigers, have a pale gold coat with faint reddish stripes. Officials in Kaziranga National Park, in Assam, have reported a handful of them since 2014, and a golden tigress photographed in 2020 drew worldwide attention. Experts in India say these colors are a warning rather than good news, because they point to too little gene flow between populations.
Where do Bengal tigers live?
Bengal tigers live in four countries: India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. India holds the great majority, with the largest numbers in Madhya Pradesh, which had 785 tigers in 2022, followed by Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra. Few big cats use as many habitats. In Rajasthan they live in dry forest among old forts and lakes, as in Ranthambore. In central India they roam teak and sal forests with bamboo and open meadows, as in Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Tadoba. Along the foot of the Himalaya, in the Terai of India and Nepal, they hunt in tall elephant grass and riverine forest, as in Corbett, Chitwan and Bardia. In Assam they share the floodplain grasslands of Kaziranga with wild water buffalo, and in the Western Ghats they live in moist evergreen forest. The strangest home is the Sundarbans mangrove delta on the coast of India and Bangladesh. At the other extreme, in Bhutan, camera traps have photographed tigers up to about 4,300 meters, in the same places as snow leopards. A few tigers from the Bengal population also reach southeastern Tibet, in Medog County, where Chinese camera traps first recorded them in 2019. What every tiger needs is the same: cover, water and enough large prey.
Royal Bengal tigers of the Sundarbans
The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest in the world, a maze of islands, mud banks and tidal channels where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers meet the Bay of Bengal. It is split between Bangladesh, which holds about 60 percent of it, and the Indian state of West Bengal, and it is the only mangrove forest where tigers live. The Bangladeshi side had about 125 tigers in the 2023 to 2024 survey, up from 106 in 2015 and 114 in 2018, and the Indian side had about 101 in 2022. Life there is very different from a forest reserve. The tide floods much of the land twice a day, so tigers swim between islands, often across wide channels, and they drink brackish water. They hunt chital and wild boar but also rhesus macaques, monitor lizards, fish and crabs, and they are smaller and lighter than tigers inland. The Sundarbans tigers are also known for attacks on people: honey collectors, fishermen and woodcutters who enter the forest have been killed for centuries, and locals pray to the forest goddess Bonbibi for protection. Rising seas and stronger cyclones are now the biggest long term threat, because they eat away at the islands and push salt water deeper into the forest.
What do Bengal tigers eat?
Bengal tigers are pure carnivores that depend on large hoofed animals. Across most of India the main prey are chital or spotted deer, sambar and wild boar, and in many reserves those three make up most of what tigers eat. Gaur, the largest wild cattle in the world, nilgai, barasingha or swamp deer, and wild water buffalo are also taken, especially by big males, and a gaur can weigh more than three times as much as the tiger that kills it. When large prey is scarce, tigers eat smaller animals such as langurs, macaques, porcupines, peafowl, hares and even fish, and they sometimes kill leopards and dholes that compete with them. Near villages they also take cattle and buffalo, which is one of the main reasons for conflict with people. A tiger hunts by stalking in cover until it is very close, then rushes forward and grabs the prey, killing large animals with a bite to the throat and smaller ones with a bite to the back of the neck. Most attempts fail. After a kill it drags the body into thick cover and may stay near it for several days, eating 18 kilograms or more in one night, and an adult needs the equivalent of about 50 to 60 large deer a year.
How Bengal tigers live: territories, roars and swimming
Bengal tigers spend most of their lives alone. Each adult holds a home range that it marks by spraying urine on trees and bushes, scraping the ground, leaving scratch marks on bark and roaring. In rich places like Chitwan in Nepal a female may need only about 20 square kilometers, while a male covers several females' ranges and keeps other males out; where prey is thin, ranges can pass 100 square kilometers. Fights between males over territory are a common cause of death and the reason young males wander far looking for a place of their own. Tigers are most active at dusk, at night and at dawn, though in quiet reserves like Ranthambore they also hunt in daylight, and they can walk 20 kilometers or more in a night. The roar, used to call mates and warn rivals, can be heard about three kilometers away. When two friendly tigers meet, such as a mother and her cubs, they greet each other with a soft puffing sound called chuffing. Unlike most cats, tigers love water. They lie in pools and rivers on hot days, cross wide rivers without trouble and often chase prey into the water.
Bengal tiger cubs and family life
Bengal tigers can breed in any month, though in much of India most births happen between late winter and early summer. A male and female stay together only for a few days of mating, and the mother raises the cubs entirely on her own. After a pregnancy of about 104 days she gives birth to usually two to four cubs in a hidden den, such as a cave, a rock crevice or a thicket of tall grass. Newborns weigh only about one kilogram and are born blind; their eyes open after one or two weeks. The mother leaves them for hours to hunt and moves them to a new hiding place if she feels threatened. Cubs start following her at about two months, eat meat from about the same age and are weaned at around six months. They learn to hunt by watching and practicing, and by about 18 months they can kill on their own. Most leave their mother when they are 18 months to two and a half years old. The first two years are dangerous: many cubs die from starvation, floods, fires or attacks by males that kill cubs of other fathers to take over a female.
How many Bengal tigers are left?
Adding up the latest national counts, there are roughly 4,400 Bengal tigers in the wild. India's 2022 survey, the largest camera trap study ever done on any wild animal, estimated an average of 3,682 tigers, within a range of 3,167 to 3,925, about 75 percent of the world's wild tigers. That number has more than doubled from 1,411 in 2006, thanks to better protection and new reserves. India's sixth national survey began in January 2026, and its report is expected in 2027. Nepal counted 429 tigers in July 2026, up from 355 in 2022 and about 121 in 2009, almost all of them in Chitwan, Bardia, Parsa, Shuklaphanta and Banke. Bhutan's 2023 survey found 131, up from 103 in 2015, and the Bangladeshi Sundarbans held about 125 in 2024. These counts include adults and young tigers but not small cubs. The IUCN does not assess the Bengal tiger on its own; its global figure for the whole species is 2,608 to 3,905 mature, breeding age tigers, with a best estimate of 3,140. The rise is real, but it is concentrated in protected areas, and India's 2022 report warned that about 35 percent of its tiger reserves need stronger protection.
Is the Bengal tiger endangered?
Yes. The tiger is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, in an assessment made in December 2021 and published in 2022, and that status covers the Bengal tiger. The IUCN still describes the species' overall trend as decreasing, and its 2025 Green Status assessment rated the tiger Critically Depleted, with only about 14 percent of its full recovery, because tigers have vanished from most of their old range. The Bengal tiger is not extinct, and it is the tiger in the best shape, but it came close to collapse. By the late 1960s hunting and forest clearing had left fewer than 2,000 tigers in India. In 1972 India banned tiger hunting, and in 1973 it launched Project Tiger with nine reserves; today it has more than 50, and many villages have been moved out of core areas with compensation. The main threats are still poaching for skins, bones and other body parts sold in illegal markets, loss and fragmentation of forest to farms, roads, mines and canals, the hunting of the deer and wild boar tigers depend on, and conflict when tigers kill livestock or people. Wildlife corridors that let tigers move between reserves are now seen as the key to the next stage of recovery.
Are Bengal tigers dangerous to humans?
A Bengal tiger can kill a person easily, but most tigers avoid people, and attacks are rare compared with the number of people who live and work near tiger forests. Most attacks happen when someone enters the forest to collect firewood, honey, mushrooms or grass, or to graze cattle, and surprises a tiger at close range, often while bending or squatting. The places with the most attacks are the Sundarbans, where people work inside tiger habitat every day, and the edges of reserves in central India and the Terai, where tiger numbers have grown and young tigers move into farmland. In some years a single tiger that has started to see people as prey causes many deaths before it is captured. The most famous case is the Champawat tigress, which killed people first in Nepal and then in the Kumaon hills of India and was shot by the hunter Jim Corbett in 1907; Guinness credits her with 436 deaths. Today forest departments try to capture problem tigers alive, pay compensation for lost livestock, and teach villagers to move in groups and avoid the forest at dawn and dusk. Tourists in jeeps on guided safaris are not attacked.
