Tigers Roughhousing in the Water

On the second day after buying a new camera, I headed off to test it at the Mykolaiv Zoo, still not having fully figured out how to shoot with it. I came away with a lot of photos, but the only worthwhile shots were of the young Amur tigers, who were frolicking in the water in front of the crowd.

It all started with an ambush and a couple of skirmishes on land, after which a chase began, ending with a run along the wall and a leap into the water:

One of the tigers stayed behind to soak, while the other went back onto land and set up another ambush there, which was followed by a chase, a leap from land straight onto the back of the tiger in the water, a tussle and a lull, after which came another leap and another tussle, during which I managed to capture this shot of the fight:

After that the tigers parted ways, but the attacker lay low again, this time in the water, and the pursuit slowly continued. When the victim came up to the wall, the lurking tiger struck; the only way to move fast was by leaping, pushing off from the wall:

But there was no escaping, and the aggressor took control of the situation:

As always, in the heat of the roughhousing, the young cats lost control of themselves and crossed the line. In the end, the cries and roars drew even more spectators and woke up the resting head of the family, who had to intervene in what was going on. A few simple tiger words helped, but that didn't defuse the situation, because the angry, offended big cat immediately took its revenge, though the roughhousing didn't fully resume.

After that calm set in, and the tired tigers simply stayed sitting in the water, resting and cooling off.

I uploaded all the photos described above to Flickr and gathered them into a set; you can view them at this link. UPD. I also uploaded the photos to BigCats Gallery aka Kiara.ru, where you can view the photos at their original size.