ANATOMY
COLOR: Tigers have striped fur, usually orange stripes on black with a white underbelly. White tigers (mutated Bengal tigers from India; they are not albinos) are white with dark brown or deep maroon stripes, pink noses, and blue eyes. Black tigers (extremely rare) have orange to yellow fur with black stripes. Even rarer, stripeless tigers have been recorded.
SIZE: Adult tigers range from 4.5 feet (1.37 m) to 9 feet (2.7 m) long. Males are larger than females. The largest tigers are the Siberian tigers, weighing about 500 pounds (230 kg); the smallest are the Sumatran tigers, weighing about 250 pounds (115 kg). Tigers' tails are 3-4 feet (0.9-1.2 m) long.
EYES: Like most cats, their night-time vision is very good. They have round pupils and yellow irises (except white tigers which have blue eyes).
TEETH AND CLAWS: Tigers have retractible claws. Tigers have the largest canine teeth of any land-based carnivores.
BEHAVIOR AND SOCIAL HABITS
Tigers are mostly solitary animals except for times of mating and when the female cares for her young cubs. Sometimes tigers gather to share a large kill. Tigers are most active at night (they are primarily nocturnal), but are active in the day during the winter. Tigers mark out their territory, like most cats, by spraying their urine together with a glandular secretion, by leaving fecal droppings, or by scratching marks into trees with their claws. Tigers need a territory of about 10-30 or more square miles to provide enough prey to support them. The size of the territory depends on the amount of prey available in the area.
DIET
Tigers are meat eaters (carnivores). Their prey includes small- to medium-sized mammals (like badgers, rabbits, boars, deer, and wild cattle), ranging in size from 60 to 2,000 pounds. The usual method of killing is to ambush the animal from behind and bite its neck; this usually breaks the prey's spinal cord, killing it. Tigers then drag the kill to a safe place in which they eat it. Tigers can eat as much as 40 pounds of meat in one sitting. They can go for days at a time without eating.
HABITAT AND DISTRIBUTION
Tigers live in Asia, primarily in forests (some tigers live in areas with tall grasses, areas where they can hide while hunting). Tigers are very good swimmers and like the water, unlike most cats.
Tigers evolved in south central China and moved to nearby areas, like Siberia, Sumatra, Indochina, and India. There are no tigers native to Africa.
Tigers live in climates ranging from tropical rainforests to deciduous forests to cold, mountain hardwood forests. The Siberian tiger lives in Siberia and Manchuria, in mountain forests in elevations up to 3,000 feet.
LOCOMOTION
Tigers are very fast quadrupeds (four-legged animals).
LIFE SPAN
Tigers live about 10-15 years in the wild, and about 20 years in captivity.
REPRODUCTION
Tigers breed during the winter season, and females give birth to 2-4 blind cubs about 103 days later. The cubs weigh about 2-3 pounds at birth. One cub frequently dies at birth. The cubs live on mother's milk for 6-8 weeks and then are introduced to meat. Cubs are dependent on the mother for about a year and a half; they can start hunting on their own at this age. Female tigers reach sexual maturity at about 3 years old; males reach maturity in about 4 years.
CLASSIFICATION
Tigers belong to the:
- Kingdom Animalia (the animals)
- Phylum Chordata
- Subphylum Vertebrata (animals with backbones)
- Class Mammalia (warm-blooded animals with fur and mammary glands)
- Order Carnivora (meat-eaters)
- Family Felidae (the cats)
- Genus Panthera
- Species tigris (the tigers).
There are five tiger subspecies including the
| There are 3 extinct subspecies, the
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EXTINCTION STATUS
Tigers are threatened with extinction due to loss of habitat. There are 5 surviving subspecies; 3 other subspecies have gone extinct in the last 70 years. There are estimated to be about 5,000 to 7,400 tigers left in the wild.
EXTINCT VARIETIES
There are three tiger subspecies that have become extinct in the last 70 years. They include: the Bali tiger (Panthera tigris balica), the Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaicus), and the Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata).
EVOLUTION OF TIGERS
Tigers (and all the Order Carnivora which consists of all cats, dogs, bears, seals, weasels, stoats, pinnipeds, etc.) are descended from the family of marten-like woodland animals called the miacidae. These small omnivores evolved during the late Cretaceous period (toward the end of the age of the dinosaurs), about 70-65 million years ago. Not many fossils of these creatures have been found. These early quadrupedal mammals had 44 teeth including specialized, meat-cutting teeth. They had long bodies, long tails, flexible shoulders and elbows, and short, flexible limbs. Over millions of years these animals evolved into two major sub-orders:
- Fissipeda (meaning "split feet") which includes weasels, dogs, hyenas, cats, mongooses, and relatives
- Pinnipeda (meaning "fin feet") which includes sea lions, seals, and walruses.
Modern-day tigers evolved in Asia. Early tiger fossils have been found in China and Siberia. No one knows exactly where modern-day tigers appeared first.
The saber-toothed tiger (genus Smilodon) was not the ancestor of modern tigers. It led to a branch of cats that was an evolutionary dead-end.
TIGER PRINTOUTS
Tigers
Bengal tiger
Siberian or Amur tiger
Tiger quiz to printout
Bengal Tiger |
Tiger |
Tiger |
Sumatran Tiger |
Tiger |
Sumatran Tiger |
Bengal Tiger |
Siberian Tiger |
Tiger |
Tiger |
Siberian Tiger |
Bengal Tiger |
Sumatran Tiger |
Bengal Tiger |
Tiger |
Bengal Tiger |
Tiger |
Tiger |
Indochinese Tiger |
Tigers (Panthera tigris) are mammals of the Felidae family, one of four ?big cats? that belong to the Panthera genus. Tigers are predatory carnivores.
Tigers are easily recognizable by their stripes and their tawny fur color, which may range from yellow to orange (the white tiger is one notable exception).
Most tigers live in forests (for which their camouflage is ideally suited) and grasslands. Of all the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers, and tigers may often be found bathing in ponds, lakes and rivers. Tigers hunt alone, and their diet consists primarily of medium-sized herbivores such as barking deer, sambar, elk, chital, swamp deer, red deer, rusa deer, wild pigs and buffalo, but they will also take larger prey if the circumstances demand it.
There are eight separate subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct and one of which is almost certain to become so in the near future. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Russia, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China and southeast Asia, including the Indonesian islands.
The Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found through the forests and grasslands of Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India and Nepal. It is the national animal of India. The estimated wild population of this subspecies is 3000 to 4600, most living in India. These tigers are under severe pressure from both habitat reduction and from poaching; some recipes in Chinese medicine (in particular cures for impotence) require parts of tigers. Project Tiger, an Indian conservation project launched in 1972, has had limited success in protecting this subspecies.
The North China Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), formerly the Amur or Siberian Tiger, alternately the Northeast China or Manchurian Tiger, is now confined almost totally to a very restricted part of eastern Russia. There are thought to be between 150 and 400 of these tigers in the wild today, and many populations are no longer considered to be genetically viable, meaning that they are subject to potentially catastrophic inbreeding.
The Balinese Tiger (Panthera tigris balica) has always been limited to the island of Bali. These tigers were hunted to extinction ?the last Balinese Tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese Tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hindoo religion.
The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the late 1960s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968. Historically it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union and Turkey.
Corbetts Tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), or the Indo-Chinese Tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Estimates of its population vary between 1200-1800, but it seems likely that it is in the lower part of this range. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed end up providing stock for Chinese pharmacies and the tiger is seen by poor native people as a resource through which they can ease poverty.
The Javan Tiger (Panthera tigris mondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies was made extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last specimen was sighted in 1979.
The Sumatran Tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500 animals, occurring predominantly in the island?s five national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it is not made extinct. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran Tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. Habitat destruction is the main threat to the existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), but 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000?nearly 20% of the total population.
The South China Tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen Tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger, and will almost certainly become extinct. It seems likely that the last known wild South Chinese tiger was shot and killed in 1994, and no live tigers have been seen in their natural habitat for the last 20 years. In 1959, Mao Zedong declared the tiger to be a pest, and numbers quickly fell from 4000 or so to approximately 200 in 1976. In 1977 the Chinese government reversed the law, and banned the killing of wild tigers, but this appears to have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive Chinese tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only 6 animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies no longer exists, making its eventual extinction very likely
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