Astonishing tiger footage

The club where I started my training in jiu-jitsu is called Tora-do ryu; translation: "Way of the tiger school".  Here's a clip that shows a bit of what a real tigress can do:




Stealth, speed, huge leap, balance, intent: wow!

Snippets from the back-story:

The 25-year-old mahout, Satya Pegu, who was badly lacerated, lost three fingers on his left hand, is in a hospital in Dibrugarh. Doctors are worried about the onset of gangrene and may have to amputate his left palm.

Reconstruction of events and a video taken by the divisional forest officer, R.K.Das, graphically show how Joymala pinned down the tigress with her foot as it was trying to get up and attack the officers who had fallen on the ground.

The team cautiously moved towards it and could get to almost 20 feet where she was growling away. Bodo could see her clearly and took a shot at it with the dart gun. The dart missed her and this enraged her so much that she charged and took a “flying” leap on to the elephant’s head. “I have not seen something as dramatic as this,” Vivek Menon, executive director WTI, who recently saw the footage, said. “I could never imagine that a tiger could so effortlessly leap from the ground on to an adult elephant’s head, which is at least 12 feet above the ground,” he said.

more details...

Notice how the tigress grabs the ground and pulls herself forward with her front legs.  Even though humans have only one pair of feet, we can do a bit of that too.  It's a good exercise (and good exercise) to play with that grabbing and pulling action while walking around.