Sundar King of Hearts

Sundar is Hindu for beautiful, he was also known by many as B2.

Note the heart shaped stripe on his cheek.

Very rarely is there a wild male tiger that can live for 14 years and even more impressively so; rule his kingdom for almost 10 years. B2 is such a tiger, born in 1997, he was one of 3 siblings, his brothers being B1 (Raj) and B3 (Bara Larka). Of the 3 cubs B2 was the most dominant, romantic and aggressive and demanded the attention of visitors and park rangers. People came to Bhandavgarh National Park just to see him and he became one of the most photographed tiger in the wild.

He was fearless and did not mind the presence of vehicles and was also a cattle killer, he was once recorded jumping a 7-11 foot tall fence with more than 200kg of cattle in his jaws. With his aggressive behavior B2 protected his kingdom for almost 10 years and fathered some 35-40 cubs with 6 females. He had seen many challenges from both strangers and related tigers but he held firmed. During one of his fights he was injured with a 4 inch deep wound in his neck and was thought to have disappeared from his kingdom. Park rangers wanted to find him and patch him up, but he was nowhere to be found. The thing with many tiger territories is that there will always be some areas that man by whatever means will find difficult to traverse or never be able to access, B2 was no exception. Luckily after a while the King pulled through his injury now nothing more than a scar and continued ruling and doing what he pleased.

B2 had had a long rivalry with a slightly younger male known as Bokha lasting for years. Unlike B2, Bokha was a shy cat and would hide away whenever he saw people. However while being shy around humans, Bokha was an aggressive contender and had fought B2 many times when he (B2) tried to expand his territory on Bokha’s. B2 was definitely the more dominant of the two heavy weights and would usually win the confrontations. There was news that Bokha had killed one of B2’s son over a territorial dispute, supposedly after his challenger took a being from B2 himself.

B2 owned prime real-estate in Bhandavgarh National Park and as such had to defend his area and females from many new comers, often younger and sometimes stronger males. At 14 B2 became the second oldest wild male Bengal Tiger on record with his father (and also grandfather?) the famous Charger (so named for his strong dislike of people and he was known to charge at elephants and jeeps) being the oldest, passing at 16. B2 had removed his own father from power and while Charger was already old and blinded due to cataracts, he lived a long and good life. After his confrontation with B2, Charger; old and injured found himself in a small ditch where he stayed half dead before park rangers picked him up. B2 himself was almost close to achieving this age, he was still capable of hunting and unlike Charger did not have cataracts, but as time went by and the tiger population grew B2 faced far more challenges than his father was ever known to, sometimes even from his own sons. I know of only 3 times he had to go up against his sons, one named Challenger, the other Kallu and finally the larger Bamera.

Unfortunately for B2 history was repeating itself, for he had to stand and face Bamera just as he had faced his father Charger for the Bhandavgarh Kingdom. Stolen away from his father, B2 also said goodbye to his kingdom and left the area. When found by park rangers he was in a deplorable state, he was unable to hunt due his injuries and was starving. He was tranquilized so that they could help him with his injuries, but B2 was just too old, injured and weak and could not handle being tranquilized, he passed away on the back of a truck in a cage.

Ref:

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His son Bamera;

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More pics

The lover;

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With a very young cub;

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Head-on;

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Interacting with his adult son Kallu, this relationship was quite odd, as while male tigers are known to visit their cubs and let his family take from his kill, there is somewhat of an age and gender limit fathers will allow, daughters are usually more tolerated than sons after 2-4 years and are allowed to hunt in their father’s territory, but here B2 seems fine with a 4-5 year old Kallu, this image of course was before Kallu began to challenge his father;

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The warrior King;

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Tis but a flesh wound;

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One of his family with sub-adult Kallu facing us, B2 himself was only a few feet away;

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Sundar, a fitting name;

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Eating grass;

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Some of his final images;

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Info taken from, Tigernation, the Bhandavgarh National Park website, India Nature Watch...and some other places.
 

Been little over a year now since I submitted anything or even been very active on this place…I have excuses for those, anyway really hoping to be more active. Also I suck at backgrounds.