Indian and Bangladeshi wildlife officials are to carry out the world's largest census on Bengal tigers to study their breeding and feeding patterns and find out why some of them become man-eaters, Associated Press reports today.

The $125,000 biodiversity project, partly funded by UNESCO, will take place in the Sunderbans jungle, which straddles the two countries and is one of the few remaining natural habitats for tigers.

Tigers kill about 50 people every year on the jungle's Indian side, officials said. Bangladesh's official news agency, Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, reported that tigers killed 22 people in the country last year and 24 the year before.

"Human beings are not a natural diet for tigers," said Atanu Raha, chief conservator of forests in West Bengal state. "A tiger turns into a man-eater only under extraordinary situations, like when it grows too infirm or disabled to hunt, or when there is a scarcity of its natural prey."

Bangladeshi wildlife officials blame tiger attacks on the destruction of their natural habitat through poaching or illegal logging (Nupur Banerjee, AP, July 28).

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