A wonderful story has come out of India recently that provides a heartwarming insight into the otherwise sad world of the continued poaching of the earth's tigers. In a staggering statistic, experts say that 97% of tigers have been lost to poaching and shrinking habitats. India has the world's largest numbers of tigers with about 1706 currently living there. There has been a major decline of this beautiful creature though since there were about 100,000 tigers in India at the turn of the last century.

With Father's Day rapidly approaching in the U.S. this sweet story reminds us of how important fathers can be in the rearing of their offspring. Recently in the Ranthambore tiger reserve in India, two baby tiger cubs lost their mother in February. This reserve is currently home to about 40 tigers. What is seen as an extremely rare show of paternal affection and caring has been demonstrated by a male tiger who forest officials in northern India say is the father.

This has been backed up by photographs taken of the male tiger with the two cubs by hidden cameras in the forest. The cubs who are about 8 months old now are still too young to make a food kill on their own. The male adult tiger has been seen with them while their are hungrily devouring a fresh kill. The male tiger makes no attempt to take away the food for himself. The cubs appear to be in very good health also.

In the wild, normally the mother tiger or tigress is the sole caretaker of her offspring. Male tigers will usually kill the cubs if they come across them. After the female gives birth the male tiger will only come around to try to mate with the female, nothing more. In fact male tigers rarely are allowed to even see their offspring because they tend to view the cubs as food. The behavior of this father tiger is completely unheard of. Officials say there is no recorded evidence of males behaving like this in the past.

Just when humans in their arrogant assumptions think they know everything there is to know about the world's tigers, a father tiger comes along and proves them wrong. This is an important realization that many animals are much more complex than man has ever given them credit for. It is high past time that we as the human animal in the world take a step down from our self appointed role as the supreme species. We must open our eyes wide to the possibilities that other animal species have so much more to teach us about our world and theirs.

Most importantly we must learn to share our world with them rather than continue to abuse, use or destroy them. After all they are our brothers/sisters created by the same loving Creator that also created the human race. Isn't it logical then that we would all share the same feelings of love and parental concern that man for so long thought was his exclusive claim?