In December 1997, deep in the frozen taiga of Russia's Far East, an Amur tiger did something that still frightens the people who investigated it.

Near the tiny logging village of Sobolonye in the Bikin River valley, a local hunter named Vladimir Markov went out into the forest. A wounded tiger was already out there. By the time Markov came back to his remote cabin, the tiger had got there first.

It didn't just pass by. It tore the place apart. It chewed through his belongings, dragged his mattress out into the snow and destroyed things that carried his scent. Then it lay down outside and waited for him.

What happened next set off one of the strangest wildlife investigations in history. Yuri Trush and the anti-poaching team Inspection Tiger followed the trail through brutal cold, and what they found raised a question scientists still argue about: can a tiger single out one person and hold a grudge?

In this documentary we look at:
🐅 The Amur tiger, one of the largest and rarest big cats on Earth
🌲 Life and poaching in post-Soviet Primorye in the 1990s
🔍 The evidence that the tiger went after one man in particular
⚠️ The hunt for the tiger before it could kill again
🧠 What science says about tiger memory, revenge and predator behavior
This story became famous through John Vaillant's book The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, which we recommend if you want to go deeper.

Sources & further reading:
John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (2010)
Records from the Inspection Tiger unit, Primorsky Krai
WWF and Wildlife Conservation Society research on the Amur tiger

This video is a documentary retelling of real events. Some scenes are dramatized or recreated for storytelling.

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