This is the correct answer. Why are they so violent?

Not even on the same continent. Hippos are in Africa and Tigers are in Asia. Pretty big desert in between

Yeah, predators get excited when you turn around and start moving away. These eyes are just asking "what are you doing step bro?".

Tigers with horns 😨😨 ?

umm... hornier?

That's not long enough to evolve something like this, though.

They are actually doing a bit better than we thought

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/23/1113186725/tigers-population-numbers-endangered-species

in the Ganges Delta in India, where tigers living under protection in a reserve had been killing about 60 people a year.

Geez that's a lot.

I learned this from Calvin & Hobbes

That makes sense. Tigers are just big cats - they're all kinda jerks to each other (let alone other animals), but I suppose that comes with being an apex predator.

Yeah, you think you’re hot shit as a tiger and then here comes a Hellwasp…

Well that begs the question what the hell drove the short face bear to extinction? The long face bear?

my new head canon is that tigers are so fed up with asiatic wild dogs that they started calling them d holes

I hear what you're saying, and you're 100% correct, but I think most people will realize it's a figure of speech, and easier to say than "Via the process of gene mutation trial and error over many, many generations of tigers, spots have developed on their ears that look like eyes, resulting in predation from behind being discourged."

All models are wrong, but some are useful. Thinking of evolved features as having a purpose is wrong, but it is also incredibly useful.

Why do we have eyes? In some sense, there is no reason, just a sequence of random coincidences, combined with a slightly non-randon bias refered to as "survival of the fittest" (itself an incorrect model).

However, saying that we have eyes to see has incredible explanatory power, which makes it a useful model. Just like Newton's law of Universal gravity. We've known it that is wrong for a century at this point, but most of the time still talk as if it's true, because it is useful.

Yes, they did though. That's the purpose of this evolutionary trait. I see what you're getting at, but you seem to be implying this was a concidence