NEW DELHI: The 14-year-old tiger that was found dead two days ago in Sunderbans of West Bengal had swallowed two snakes, including a venomous king cobra, before it succumbed to liver infection, a senior state forest official has said.
"It was a startling revelation for us when we found the pieces of the snakes inside the tiger's stomach. One of them was a king cobra while the another was a commonly found reptile species," Atanu Kumar Raha, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) of West Bengal, told PTI.
It is probably for the first time that a tiger having consumed poisonous reptiles like cobra has come to the knowledge of wildlife officials, Raha said.
He said hostile ecological and riverine conditions make the Sunderban predators more hardy and agile when compared to their counterparts in other reserves.