the magnificent world of tigers

7/29/2019 The magnificent world of tigers

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TigersTigers belong to the largest of the cat species. They can

reach the length of 3.3 meters or 11 feet and can get asheavy as 306 kilograms or 670 pounds, while also giftedwith enough bounding energy to catch their prey. Youcan easily recognize the tiger through the dark stripesthat are stamped on its orange red fur; the combinationcreates a sharp contrast but the overall effect still allowsthe tiger to lurk in silence. Though attractive, the tigercan be dangerous to its prey, with its significantly largeteeth and long canines, which can reach 74.5 millimetersor 2.93 inches at their crown height.

Tigers originate from the Asian continent and are notnative to Africa as is often believed. There are Chineseand Bengal tigers that have been resettled into Africa.These animals are commonly released from zoos andintroduced for the purpose of extending the survival andhabitat of their species.

Longevity

Tigers live long whether you find them in the wild or inthe confines of a zoo. Their longevity reaches 26 years,which should have been enough time to breed well. It isnot only their size that is large but also its appetite forterritory. Though tigers usually prefer living and huntingalone, they are also very social animals that need large

areas in which to live and hunt. Unfortunately for tigers,developments favoring us humans have destroyed theirhabitats. This is food for thought to us all who want to dosomething to help revive the tiger population.

Habitat and Population


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Tigers used to be abundant in Asian countries, includingTurkey and Russia. However, the past century has seenthe tigers lose almost a hundred percent of the placethey used to inhabit. Today, the tiger habitats are living

in grasslands, the Siberian tanga and even in themangrove swamps of the tropics. On writing, it soundsas if there is still a generous patch of land available.

There arent a lot of tigers left in general, though. Withonly six subspecies left, tigers have been declaredendangered by the IUCN. Tigers that remained in theforests are only a little more than 3,000 in number. Therest of the tigers, which may have not been included in

the count, belong to small, isolated groups that sort ofact like family units. The population has suffered a rapiddecline due to the destruction of the tigers' homes aswell as because of the crime of poaching. So, at thispoint, the area left inhabited by tigers is at only 184,911square kilometers or 457,497 square miles. Thisestimate, however, was good in the 1990s. Today, thearea could be a lot smaller.

Remains

The oldest remnants that could be traced back to a cat-like creature with tiger-like qualities are ones that belongto the Panthera palaeosinensis. These remains havebeen discovered in China, as well as in Java. Theexcavation is quite a feat for the scientific community asthe species could be traced back to about two millionyears ago. The animal was smaller than tigers that we

know of today. Remains of tigers, which are ancestors ofmodern tigers, have also been found in Java. Theseremains are about 1.6 to 1.8 million years old.

Archeologists have also managed to dig up some fossilsdating to largely the first half of the Pleistocene age in


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Sumatra and China. Fossils that have been found inTrinil, Java are known to belong to a subspecies that hasbeen given the name Trinil tiger or Panthera tigristrinilensis, which has lived around 1.2 million years ago.

In the late Pleistocene age, tigers first lived in India, aswell as in northern Asia. They also reached Sakhalin andJapan among other areas. Judging from the fossils foundin Japan, the local tigers were smaller compared to theones living in the mainland. This could have been causedby a phenomenon that makes the body size adjust to theavailable space. Mainland tigers, after all, have moreroom to run and stretch and have therefore more

chances to become larger. For a time, tigers alsopopulated Borneo before the Holocene era arrived. Theyalso once lived in Palawan, which can be found in thePhilippines.

Tigers' Hunting Habits

Tigers hunt for prey, which even include fearsomepredators such as crocodiles, leopards and pythons.When fighting a crocodile, they go for the eyes usingtheir paws. This occurrence is not even rare. Eighteenthcentury doctor Oliver Goldsmith has talked about howtigers and crocodiles sometimes fight. This scenario ismade possible when thirsty tigers go for a drink by therivers, where mugger crocodiles live. Usually, thecrocodile ends up being disabled while the tiger is ableto escape. There are cases, however, where mugger

crocodiles end up killing the tigers.In the case of leopards, they try to hunt at differenttimes from tigers to avoid competition. Usually though,leopards and tigers are able to co-exist in peace whenthere is enough prey to go around. Again, exemptions tothe rule exist.


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Tigers even go against wolf populations in places wherethe two species somehow co-exist. It is all about showingwho's boss. Packs of wolves do not just go without afight. They do attack and even kill tigers when the two

species clash because of food. This fight, however, findsboth sides suffering a lot of losses.

Meanwhile, solitary creatures manage to co-exist withtigers. A golden jackal without a pack, for example, willtrail a tiger for food. There is even a case of a jackalfinding itself among three tigers for the sake of followingtheir trail of food.

As for competition between species, Siberian tigers andbrown bears can clash because of food. Usually though,both sides would try to avoid a confrontation. Still, thereare cases of tigers killing bear cubs, as well as adultbears. A tiger living in the Russian Far East actuallyincludes Asiatic black bears as well as brown bears into 5to 8 percent of its diet.

Brown bears have also been recorded to have killed

tigers when defending themselves or avenging ordisputing over kills. There have been bears that have lefttheir hibernation to attempt to steal away the tigerskills. Of course, the tigers will also defend their prey.

Sloth bears, meanwhile, are aggressive and are fierceenough to shoo away young tigers from their kills.However, adult Bengal tigers usually hunt for slothbears.

Conserving Tigers

As we have read, tigers hunt and are also being huntedby other predators. What we know well is that tigers,whatever the subspecies may be, are all endangered.Predators killing off tigers are not even the main cause.


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Habitat destruction and poaching for tiger fur are themain causes of the decrease of wild tiger populations.

In the beginning of the 20th century, there were more

than 100,000 tigers all over the world. There is also thefact that traditional Chinese medicine makes use of tigerparts. Alarmingly, the population has rapidly decreasedto somewhere between 3,500 and 1,500 wild tigers.

There are some estimates that say that there are fewerthan 2,500 adult breeding tigers in the wild. There areno sub-populations that compose of more than 250.These statistics show just how desperate the tigers'

situation has become.

Scientific Names

Back in 1758, Linnaeus gave the tiger "Felis tigrisas" asits scientific name in his Systema Naturae. However, in1929, Reginald Innes Pocock, a British taxonomist hasdeclared the animal part of the genus Panthera. At thattime, the tiger has instead become tagged with the

scientific name Panthera tigris. Note that Panthera as aword could be Oriental in origin and may even be tracedback to various ancient words such as pantera (Latin),pantere (French) and panther, which is Ancient Greek.The word, in the olden days, would most likely refer to ayellowish animal, which the tiger is.


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the magnificent world of tigers

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