Bengals and Tigers

I am not by any means a fan of American football but I like the colorful names they give to their teams. One team whose name always intrigued me was the Cincinnati Bengals. That is a very unusual name for an American team and today they had a story on signing their quarterback Carson Palmer till 2014.

Now Cincinnati's zoo is very famous in the country. In fact it is the second oldest zoo in the US. During 1960's when the team was formed the zoo was famous for having the rare Bengal tiger in captivity which was very uncommon in the United States during that time. Thus the actual Bengal tiger was the inspiration behind the team's name.

Recently, there has been a lot of press about the Bengal tigers in India especially after the tiger poaching incidents in Sariska where it was found from the recent census of the national sanctuary that the entire tiger population was wiped out by poachers. This has led the other famous tiger sanctuaries in India to turn to technology to make their tiger census as accurate as possible. This news item from today's Indian Express talks about the latest pugmark analysis computer program and GPS technology developed by Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) to conduct the tiger census in the Sundarbans reserve early next year.

From American football to ISI's pugmark analysis computer program - this world is indeed strangely connected.