This was originally posted at Words of Wisdom from the Scarf Princess. (Thanks for hosting me on my tour, Jody!)
In my Tiger Shifter series, one of the underlying conflicts of the world is that the Tigers are on the brink of extinction. The number of females has been dropping for awhile, but they noticed two centuries ago that the female population was dangerously low. No one knew exactly why female numbers had dropped so much, so there was no easy solution to the problem. The imbalance led to some pretty extreme behaviors—death match fighting among the males, gang rapes of females which often resulted in the death of the female. Their entire species stood on the brink of chaos and destruction.
Sounds pretty extreme, right? Well I actually got the idea
for this from a real life crisis with the Hawaiian monk seals. Back when I was
in college in Hawaii, this issue with the monk seals was so extreme, biologists
didn’t know what to do. Female numbers had dropped significantly and no one
knew why. Males were raping and killing females in their desperation to breed,
which only made the situation worse. The entire species stood on the brink of
extinction.
Because my tigers have human intellect, they devised a way
to mitigate the problem. They instigated the Mate Run—a single female runs from
a group of males during her estrous, she allows one to “catch” her, and they
spend the three days of her cycle trying to get pregnant. If they succeed, they
can choose to stay together as a couple. Or they can part ways when they no
longer want to be together. But unless the woman gets pregnant, she’s not
allowed to be with any of the males. This was the only way to make access to
the female tigers fair.
Into modern times, the Mate Run works for the most part.
There are few fights among the males and they protect rather than gang up on
the females. But after more than a century and a half of this tradition, things
are starting to strain at the edges. Love, lust, jealousy, possessiveness,
protectiveness, all complicate the basic biological problem of
reproduction—just like they do in human relationships. And the tigers still
haven’t found a way to fix their population crisis.
This crisis gives me a lot of room to play. And a lot of
conflicts to explore! Especially when it comes to love.
If you give the tigers a try, I hope you enjoy their
stories! There are many more to come.
Oh and for the record, the Hawaiian monk seals are still
endangered. More than just the male/female ratio imbalance and male aggression plagues
their efforts to survive. But in 2008, they were made Hawaii’s official state
mammal in an effort to raise awareness and increase protection efforts.
