JAIPUR: A queen past her prime chuffed somewhere beyond the lantana. A young suitor followed. The scrub and dust of Ranthambore’s Zone 6 bore witness Saturday evening to a spectacle even veteran trackers blinked at – the national park’s oldest living tigress T-39, aka Noor, mating at an age when most big cats have long hung up their claws.Estimated to be 17 to 18 years old, Noor already holds the Ranthambore record for breeding at the oldest age ever seen in the wild. In 2022, she produced a litter – her ninth – defying the norm that tigresses stop breeding by 12 or 13. In May 2023, conservation biologist Dharmendra Khandal saw her litter weak and emaciated, her udder dried up.Yet here she was – glowing coat, canines intact – mating with T-101, with reports she had also paired with another male days earlier. “Mating at this age has not been observed in the wild,” former honorary wildlife warden Balendu Singh said. “She is healthy. At present, she is the oldest living tigress in the wild without intervention.”Noor’s longevity and reproductive fire point to formidable genetics. She is the daughter of Old Sultanpur female T-13 – known as Binda. “Her mother reached 18.5 years without support until she disappeared in Oct 2023,” Khandal said. “But the maximum breeding age I’ve personally observed in the wild is that of Noor in Ranthambore.”The mating may never bear fruit. “Not a cat in hell’s chance,” said a veterinary officer, adding there’s no documented case of a tigress birthing at or after 17 even in captivity. But in the wild, as Khandal put it, there’s always “a rare push against nature’s limits”.Sometimes it’s male pressure, sometimes it’s her choice. “The desire of an older female cannot be denied,” Khandal said. Noor had shown that the wild has its own clock – and she still keeps the time.