IMAGINE taking your babies out to get food only to come face-to-face with a tigress. What do you do?
Aditya 鈥淒icky鈥� Singh, who took this photo, expected this mother sloth bear to escape to safety. She didn鈥檛. She charged across the rocky plateau as her two cubs clung onto her back, pressing their bodies down flat.
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The bear reared up onto its hind legs, screaming aggressively, intimidating the young tigress, , into backing away.
But the drama wasn鈥檛 over: Noor had been mating with a male 鈥� 鈥� that was establishing a territory here in Ranthambhore National Park, India. As Noor backed away, the much larger Ustad took her place and roared, raising a clawed paw, ready to engage.
The bear stood her ground and responded in kind. Amid this part of the clamour, Singh took this photo, which appears in his new book, , a collaboration with photographer Andy Rouse.
You can just make out one of the cubs clinging to its mother鈥檚 back. Eventually, Ustad fled, leaving the bear victorious.
Sloth bears , fruit and bees, rather than other mammals, but they have a fierce reputation . So fierce that maybe Baloo the bear from The Jungle Book, who was probably meant to be a sloth bear, should have done better in his battle against the vengeful tiger Shere Khan.
Photographer
Aditya Singh,
