Chapter 1 Mammals The Dangerous Cats 1 Which wild cats are the most dangerous The tiger lion leopard and jaguar are probably the most dangerous of the cats Nowadays these four kinds of cats cause probably fewer than two dozen deaths each year Most of the wild cats will avoid people whenever possible But there always seem to be a few individuals that hunt people regularly The wild cats are excellent hunters They are very powerful animals with great speed The African lion charges its prey at forty miles 64 kilometers per hour The cheetah can speed over sixty miles 97 kilometers per hour over level ground The cats are also great leapers The American puma is able to jump to the ground from a height of sixty feet 18 meters All of the cats are able to swim and many can climb trees They have sharp senses can learn quickly and are usually hard to spot in their native surroundings Many of the cats hunt at night which makes it dangerous for people to travel after dark In fact the surprising thing about the big cats is that so few of them become human eaters
Siberian Tiger
2 Which cat kills the most people Tigers probably kill more people each year than any other cat Tigers are very strong They grab their prey with their claws and clutch it within reach of their powerful jaws Tigers can swim very well and can climb though not as well as leopards The tiger’s eyesight is not very good so tigers depend upon their hearing and sense of smell when hunting The tiger eats an enormous amount of food and will stay with its dead prey until it is all eaten Tigers often hunt at night Most tigers avoid people as much as possible but some become terrible human eaters A human eating tiger can terrify populations in dozens of square miles of countryside People refuse to travel at night or go to remote villages An unarmed person is no match for such a human eater Tigers have even been known to raid villages ripping through the thin walls and doors of houses to get at the people within
