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The first thing you need to know about tigers: They like to eat bears.

The second thing: They’re best studied in Missoula, Montana.

Despite being half a planet away from the nearest wild tiger habitat, experts from Bhutan, China and Russia have come to the University of Montana to sharpen their wildlife biology skills.

Two weeks ago, Tshering Tempa became the first student from Bhutan to complete a doctoral degree at UM. Dina Matiukhina is a senior research biologist at the Land of the Leopard National Park near Vladivostok studying Amur tigers and Amur leopards (a big cat even more endangered than tigers). And Wenhong Xiao is a post-doctoral researcher just across the border monitoring the Amur tigers that prowl between China and Russia.

Despite combined decades of tiger studies, Tempa, Matiukhina and Xiao have seen just two wild tigers in their collective careers. Thanks to the innovation of camera traps, they’ve documented thousands of images of tiger behavior and population change. And that’s occasionally revealed how close they are to the predator they never see.

“I came to check a camera trap, and saw a paw print,” Tempa said of one occasion. “When we checked the pictures, we saw we were 30 seconds apart.”