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The October 2025 issue of National Geographic features Prasenjeet Yadav’s rare black tiger photograph.
For 120 days, Prasenjeet Yadav woke up in the jungles of Odisha carrying the same hope: that his camera trap might finally hold the image he had been chasing for years. Most days, the memory cards showed nothing. On others, they revealed normal tigers passing by.
Still, he returned again and again. Every few weeks, he shifted the cameras, tried new trails, and studied scent-marked trees. Forest staff shared their knowledge of Similipal’s rhythms. Yet the tiger he wanted to see — the one whose dark stripes melt into a black coat — remained hidden.
Then one morning, the image appeared. A single frame of a black tiger, so rare that even locals rarely glimpse it, stared back at him. That photograph, born of patience and persistence, is now on the cover of National Geographic magazine’s October 2025 issue.
A scientist turned storyteller
Yadav did not start out as a photographer. He studied molecular ecology and worked in research labs. One of his mentors, scientist Uma Ramakrishnan, was part of the team that studied the genetics of Similipal’s black tigers.
Her research showed that almost half of the 30 tigers here carry the mutation that causes pseudo-melanism. But it also revealed a risk: because the population is isolated, the same genes are being passed repeatedly through a small group of animals.
For Yadav, this combination of science and story was compelling. “I never saw stories as just stories,” he told National Geographic. “I also build them with data backed from active research.”
The wait: 120 days of patience
Photographing these animals was never going to be easy. Yadav set up camera traps and returned again and again to check them. Regular tigers often walked past the lenses. The black tigers stayed away.
“These black tigers were incredibly shy,” he said. “They stayed away from my camera traps and could smell human presence. It took me two months of tracking before I could spot even one.”
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He began moving his cameras every few weeks, choosing trails that seemed less obvious, and even watching trees where tigers had left scent marks. Forest staff became vital partners in the effort.
It took four months of patience before his lens finally caught the tiger that locals call T12 — a 10-year-old male who has fathered many melanistic cubs in the reserve.
That single frame was extraordinary in itself. Yet its journey did not end in Similipal.
Beyond the cover shot
When Yadav’s image was chosen for the cover of National Geographic, it was celebrated as a first. No black tiger had ever appeared in the magazine before. But for him, the picture carried weight beyond recognition.
“Twelve years ago, I dreamt of telling this story. Today, that dream is on the cover of National Geographic,” he wrote on Instagram.
The photograph itself speaks of both wonder and warning. Similipal is the only place in the world where these tigers exist. Their uniqueness is a symbol of beauty, and their isolation a signal of fragility.
What the black tiger tells us
The black tiger of Similipal is both a marvel and a reminder. It shows us how much beauty can survive when forests are protected — and how much we stand to lose if we turn away. These tigers exist nowhere else on earth.
Yadav’s long wait in the forest gave the world more than a photograph. It gave us a reason to look closer, to act sooner, and to believe that rare wonders can endure if we choose to protect them.