Something about this kitty litter smells fishy.

On a serious note: India's tiger population is dwindling. As of Feb 12th, 2008, only 1411 tigers were left in India, according to a CNN IBN (exclusive, no doubt) report. This population figure was corroborated by Stripey the Cub (see picture) in his childish yet poignant blogpost on saveourtigers.com, dated Jan 29th 2010. Then, just last week, I saw an Aircel billboard that punctuated my worst fears...there are only 1411 tigers left in India. It's about time we raise an important question. How that one?

How are there still exactly 1411 tigers left in India? Are these the same 1411 that were around in 2008? If so, what are we feeding them? The saveourtigers campaign has done a fantastic job keeping this number constant. Or has it...?

Digest some math. Your average wild tiger lives on uncooked meat for about 12 years. It is female, 50 percent of the time. From age 2.5, the tigress is highly fertile, making roughly 4 healthy cubs in her lifetime. Assuming a bell curve distribution of ages of the 705.5 female tigers alive as of Feb 2008, we find that approximately 600 fertile females existed, which, by May 2010, would have birthed (2.4/9.5)*600*4 = 606.31 cubs, of which 606 would be healthy. My question is simple. Where are those 606 cubs? Camouflaged? I think not.

I believe it's time Dhoni and the rest of the team at Aircel pool in the money they saved by never having to change their billboards for the last 2 years, and the money they saved by skimping on RnD by rebranding 9-year old GPRS technology as "pocket internet", to find the lost tiger cubs of India.