After the collapse of humanity, many species began engaging in social activities, language development, and trade. Tigers did not.
The Panthera Tigris are not by any means a stupid species, but because of their extreme solitude they are still for the most part not citizens of the world. They do not think in words for the most part; words assume that there is someone else worth communicating to. As a result, they are often looked down on for having no self-awareness—although that very idea, some bonobo scholars say, implies a divided self.
Tigers, for the most part, have no comment on the debate. Four-hundred-pound predators back at the top of their food chain require little validation from the more social species.
There are a few concepts that most tigers can communicate: This land is mine. I am aggressive. I want to mate. But as they acclimate to the changing world, they have been borrowing phrases from other, more elaborate animal languages, to express new ideas on the occasions when they do want to talk to each other.They also make heavy use of portmanteau, combining words of their own with words from other animals.
One example would be the “hrrr-anaak.” The first part of the word loosely means “together”; the inflection determines whether that togetherness is for mating or fighting. “anaak” is borrowed from the macaque monkey, and means “sickness” or “disease.” It is a sound that the macaques make to communicate to one another a need for help, a noise that the tigers themselves use to track easy prey. Tigers do not have a word in their own language for sickness; to communicate weakness would be dangerous and unnecessary.
The together sickness appears to be new, although that may just be because they are talking about it. It is the desire to be with another, not during mating time, and not because they are your children. It takes many forms. Sometimes it is a desire to mate when not in heat. Sometimes it is a desire to infringe on the territory of another, not to take it for yourself, but to see the…other.*
The together sickness gets people killed. It is a feeling that drives the sufferers to dangerous lengths. It can be either a vague feeling, or specific. When it is specific, the sufferer will follow one other tiger around, making it difficult to hunt, forcing a confrontation. These confrontations have begun leading to frustrated, commiserating conversations between non-sufferers, but paradoxically, sometimes these conversations end with a creeping, itching desire to see some other person again.
Nnnn, a female, was ten years old when she contracted the together sickness. She had had an interest in the speaking species for some time, and if anything, spent less time with other tigers than most, favoring the macaques, who would sit at a safe distance and talk to her about events in the global animal marketplace. She was moderately famous for ignoring her state of heat in order to spend more time talking.
So it was strange to her when she stumbled into another tiger, a young male, on the edge of her territory, and felt a desire to be and stay near him. Being the student that she was, she recognized it instantly as a case of the together sickness. Being logical as she was, she tried to ignore the feelings, knowing that if she followed him instead of hunting her own territory, they would inevitably fight.
But the feelings got stronger, and drove her to pursue him at times when she thought he might be sleeping, and might not notice her creeping up on him. This did not satisfy her, though.
She spoke to her colleagues among the macaques about it. They suggested that she was feeling what they called “Team Morale.”
"No," she said. "That doesn’t seem like it."
"You want to be with him because you would be better and more efficient as a work-unit," they said. "It seems like kind of a small unit, but you are pretty solitary."
"But it wouldn’t be efficient," she said. "We aren’t built that way. It makes no sense for me to be experiencing team morale if there’s no team."
"Well," they said. "We like to leave esoterics like that to the scholars. Have you thought of visiting the bonobos? They might have some answers on why you’re feeling this way."
It was a long trip. But of course, there was nothing to pack and no one to notify. Nnnn left immediately. She didn’t say goodbye to the macaques or to the male whose name she did not know; the concept of needing to announce your departure made no sense to someone who did not understand what it means to be missed.
*It is important to note that the only words that tigers have in their language to represent someone other than “I” is “prey”, which represents both the second and the third person, singular and plural.
