Walt Disney Studios’ own Disneynature released two movies on tigers, Tigers On The Rise and Tigers. Both were produced by different directors, despite both being released on April 22nd. I watched both of them and I recommend both of them for those who want to learn about animals (specifically tigers) or how a documentary movie is produced.

Tigers are one of the several species of the genus panthera, panthera currently also contains lions, leopards, snow leopards, and jaguars but not cheetahs which are sometimes mistaken as a leopard close relative. Panthera is a part of the feliformia suborder, a group that houses all extinct and living relatives of cats, hyenas, mongooses, civets, fossas, genets, and bearcats. feliformia is one of the two suborders in the order carnivora, the other is caniformia, a suborder that houses all extinct and living relatives of dogs, skunks, red pandas, foxes, wolverines seals, and bears.

The movie starts off by introducing all the cubs and their mother, Ambar. Ambar tries to ensure that all her children survive in their harsh environment full of mugger crocodiles, pythons, rival tigers, and several other predators. Despite her efforts, she does lose a child which gets eaten by vultures and one child gets lost for a few days. Her last three offspring end up surviving and forming their own territories away from their original home, as tigers are solitary animals, meaning they don’t like to be around each other.

I liked this movie because it contained a lot of information that could help someone understand how a large predator survives. I also liked the fact that they showed both failed and successful hunts from the tigers to show that prey doesn’t always die when a predator attempts to hunt them. One thing I also liked was that they talked about how certain animals see colors differently or don’t see specific colors such as deer not seeing the color orange, meaning they only see the green pigments that are hidden by orange pigments on a tiger, which is why tigers are good at hunting deer.

I do think they should also show the cubs more, as there were scenes cut off by showing Ambar instead. Because of this, the viewers only see the aftermath showing one of the cubs being eaten by vultures, while we do not know how or why it died. Another thing I wished they looked at more is other animals in parts of the movie, essentially providing facts for the animals that are shown in that scene that were not tigers.

Tigers on the Rise is like a mix of behind-the-scenes, and a sequel to the movie Tigers. It takes place in India. The movie focuses on the issues tigers have when living around people, whether it’s not being able to cross the highway or not finding a forest. Luckily the people fix some of these problems by elevating the roads so tigers can pass under them, making protected forests for the tigers to survive in, and enforcing other laws to stop tiger killing.

I found this movie to be alright but I think it could have been better. It just felt mainly behind-the-scenes instead of being a movie, though some scenes were more documentary-style or recordings of the tigers as they survived. Overall I think it was alright, but I don’t see it as a movie. If I were to rate both movies on a scale of one to ten, I would give Tigers a 9/10 while Tigers on the Rise is 4/10.