How Long Do Tigers Live? Tiger Lifespan in the Wild and Zoos

Tiger lifespan in the wild vs in zoos

The gap exists because a wild tiger has to catch large, dangerous prey every week or so, defend a home range against rivals and avoid snares and poachers. As teeth wear and strength fades, an old wild tiger finds it harder to hunt, loses its range to a younger animal and often starves or is injured. A zoo tiger faces none of these pressures.

Some sources give a shorter wild average, around 8–10 years, because they include the many tigers that die soon after leaving their mothers. Both figures are reasonable: the lower one is a population average, while 10–15 years describes tigers that establish a range of their own.

How many tiger cubs survive?

The first two years are the most dangerous. A tigress usually gives birth to two or three cubs, which are blind and helpless at birth and depend on her completely. She has to leave them alone in hiding while she hunts.

Cubs die from:

• Infanticide, when a new male takes over a range and kills the cubs of the previous male so the female will breed with him again. In Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, a seven-year study found that 12 of 56 cubs and juveniles were killed this way.
• Starvation, if the mother is killed or cannot find enough prey.
• Predators such as leopards, dholes, other tigers and large snakes when the mother is away.
• Floods, fires and accidents, including injuries during play or early hunts.

Survival depends strongly on protection and prey. Older estimates suggest that only about half of cubs reach independence. In Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in India, six years of monitoring found an average yearly survival of about 85% for cubs, rising to about 97% for one- to two-year-olds. In Russia’s Sikhote-Alin reserve, researchers recorded very low cub mortality in one long study, but losses there rise sharply when mothers are poached.

When do young tigers become independent?

Cubs start eating meat at around two months, are weaned by about six months and follow their mother on hunts from eight to ten months. They can kill on their own from about 11 months, and they leave at 18–24 months.

The next stage is risky. A young tiger must find an empty patch of forest with enough prey. Males often wander long distances, sometimes hundreds of kilometers, and may live as “transients” on the edges of other males’ ranges until they are strong enough to win a fight. Females breed for the first time at three to four years and males at four to five years, so a tiger spends a large part of its short life simply growing up.

What kills adult tigers?

In protected reserves, many adult tigers die from natural causes:

• Fights with other tigers, especially between males competing for ranges and mates.
• Injuries from prey. Gaur, water buffalo and wild boar can gore or trample a tiger, and porcupine quills stuck in the face or paws can stop a tiger from hunting.
• Old age, often through broken or lost teeth and weakness.

Outside reserves, people are the main cause of death. Tigers are poached for skins and bones, caught in wire snares set for deer or pigs, poisoned or shot after killing livestock, and hit by vehicles and trains on roads and railways that cut through forests. These threats explain why tigers are listed as Endangered.

The oldest known tigers

The best-known long-lived wild tiger was Machli (code name T-16), a tigress of Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan, India. Born in 1997, she raised several litters, and her descendants helped rebuild the park’s tiger population and restock Sariska Tiger Reserve. In her last years she lost most of her teeth, and park staff fed her. She died in August 2016 at about 19 years old, older than any other wild tiger known at the time.

In captivity, ages of about 25–26 years have been reported for a few tigers. Treat any claim of a tiger living past 30 with caution, since these are not well documented.

Do different tigers have different lifespans?

There is no good evidence that Bengal, Amur or Sumatran tigers have different natural lifespans; what differs is the risk they face. Tigers in well-guarded Indian and Nepali reserves with plenty of deer tend to live longer than tigers in areas with heavy snaring, such as parts of Southeast Asia, where many never reach old age. Amur tigers in Russia face a long, snowy winter and very large home ranges, and poaching along logging roads is one of their main causes of death.

For comparison, wild lions usually live about 10–16 years, a similar span (see How long do lions live?). Neither cat comes close to the longest-living animals, but both live much longer in zoos than in the wild.