White spots or 'flashes' on the backs of Tiger's ears;

[Vipin Sharma]

White spots or 'flashes' on the backs of tiger's ears;
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All subspecies of tiger have white spots or 'flashes' on the backs of their ears; the reasons for these remain mostly unknown.

It has been speculated that these markings are illusory 'eyes' to fool prey, or they may serve to discourage other predators who normally hunt and attack from behind.

Another theory is that young cubs use these to find and follow their mothers in tall grass. When a tigress drops into the stalking position, with ears flattened against her head, these spots are obscured so making it more difficult for the cubs to follow and ruin the kill. This suggestion is weakened by the fact that these spots appear on both males and females -- and males have nothing at all to do with the raising of cubs.

It is more likely that ear spots are a signal of aggression. A tiger under threat will rotate the ears in such a way that the spots can be seen from the front so providing a visual warning.
Canon 7D / 150-500mm Sigma / TV-1/320 / AV-7.1 / ISO-2000 /Shooting mode P / Evaluative metering / 247 focal length.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

A very beautiful image. A young tigress surveying the area ahead behind the forest cover possibly before making up her mind whether to go for hunting. Equally possible, if she is a mother; she has heard some sound and trying to locate its origin aided by raised ear flaps as to whether it is a threat to her cubs.
Equally nice is your educative write up. Referring to your last paragraph, on the dorsal aspect of each ear the colouring is 'black' with large, prominent almost white spot in the centre. The way we analyse the 'white spot', I think, we may remember the perceptions of the predator and prey are not dominated by colour-sensitive vision, so far as is known; vision is monochromatic and the 'black' background of the almost white spot is thus important. Nature's amazing creation, perfection unlimited.
Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Mrudul Godbole]

Liked the curious pose of the tigress. Good that while clicking the image you observed this behaviour. Most of the times we click images, but miss out on observing these small natural history moments. There are so many small small things in nature and natural history, that we still don't understand fully. Thanks for sharing.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Frankly speaking it is difficult to know why the white spot occurs. Most of the prey species have monochrome vision. Predators (mammals) do have limited colour vision. Evolution of species takes a lot of time. The tigers have reached their present stage after evolution over couple of million years. The oldest known tiger fossils dating back to 2.5 million years (Panthera zdanskyi) was discovered in 2004 in China. The present day tiger is likely to have reached its current state of evolution in less than a million years. In comparison, the hunting behaviour of the predator (tiger in this case) can change depending upon the situation much faster and according to geography as well. For example, tigers are stalk and ambush predators. However, in and around the lakes we found tigers started getting into water and chasing the sambars. So one shouldn't expect that changes like spots in the coat or body structure like long and slim legs with less muscle mass for chasing will take place due to change in hunting behaviour.