The lion may sleep "in the jungle," but this tiger prefers to nap atop a car.
In a video recently posted on YouTube, a tiger falls asleep on the roof of an SUV after climbing onto the vehicle. Seth Rotherham captured the exceptional sight on camera at the private game reserve Tiger Canyons.
The vehicle's passengers, one of whom has his window down, appear to be rather calm as the tiger grips the tire and cuddles with it.
"At least he didn't bite one of the other wheels. Then we'd be in big trouble," the driver, sanctuary owner John Varty, appears to quip in the video.
The footage skips ahead and follows the vehicle as Varty slowly drives it down a dirt road in hopes that the tiger will jump off, which he eventually does.
"I couldn't believe it when he started to sleep while we were driving along. That's the first time I've ever known this to happen," Varty told the Austrian Times. "I couldn't get him off until I went over some really rough ground that he didn't like."
Varty, who also works as a filmmaker, founded the sanctuary in order to "create a free-ranging, self-sustaining tiger population outside Asia," he notes on his website. Tigers are listed as an endangered species and the geographical area where they can be found has decreased by more than 50 percent during the last three generations.
While the vehicle's passengers weren't harmed by the sleepy tiger, Varty's experience with big cats has not been without difficulties.
Last year, one of the tigers on the game reserve mauled Varty, leaving him in intensive care with several puncture wounds and broken ribs. At the time, Varty's ex-wife explained that the "attack was just about one male challenging another male," according to News24 in Africa. Varty later took to his blog to describe the experience and said he believes "aggression is in the genes" of tigers.
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