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BIOLOGY
Their Latin name is Panthera tigris
There are five different kinds or subspecies of tiger alive in the world today.
These tigers are called Amur (Siberian), South China, Indo-Chinese, Bengal, and Sumatran.
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APPEARANCE
The largest and most awesome of the big cats, the tiger exudes grace and beauty. Few animals evoke such strong feelings of fear and awe as the tiger.
The tiger's physique reflects many evolutionary adaptations for the capture and killing of large prey; the hind limbs are longer than the forelimbs, as an adaptation for jumping; the forelimbs and shoulders are heavily muscled; the forepaws are equipped with long sharp retractile claws; and the skull is foreshortened, increasing the crushing leverage of the jaws.
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Colour:
Most tigers have a distinctive reddish-orange coat with dark brown or black stripes accented with white. Tigers that live in cold climates (Siberian tigers) have thicker fur than tigers that live in warm climates.
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White Tiger:
Are simply a color variant of Bengal tigers and are rarely found in the wild. The tiger was not a true albino with pink eyes, but a genetic mutant resulting from a recessive gene that causes the orange background coloration to be replaced with white.
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Stripes:
No one knows exactly why tigers are striped, but scientists think that the stripes act as camouflage, and help tigers hide from their prey. Tiger stripes are like human fingerprints; no two tigers have the same pattern of stripes.
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Head:
The tiger's head often carries the Chinese mark of wang or king on the forehead.
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Eyes:
Tigers have round pupils and yellow irises (except for the blue eyes of white tigers). Due to a retinal adaptation that reflects light back to the retina, the night vision of tigers is six times better than that of humans.
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Teeth:
Adult tigers have 30 large teeth! The length of the canine teeth can be between 74.5 to 90 mm.
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Tail:
A tiger's tail is 3 to 4 feet long, about half as long as its body. Tigers use their tails for balance when they run through fast turns. They also use their tails to communicate with other tigers.
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Paw prints:
A tiger's paw prints are called pugmarks.
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Claws:
A tiger's forefeet have five toes and the hind feet have four toes. All toes have claws. The claws are 80 to 100 mm in length. Like domestic cats, tiger claws are retractable. Tiger scratches on trees serve as territorial markers.
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Roar:
Tigers produce a number of vocalizations including roaring, chuffing and moaning. Moaning occurs at various times including interactions or threat displays, and roaring by males or females in search of a prospective mate.
Chuffing is a vocalization made in social greetings among adults or between an adult and a cub. Interestingly, this sound can be reproduced in humans by forcing air from the mouth, across the lips formed to produce an "f" sound, while vibrating the tongue along the roof of the mouth. This greeting, when directed towards tigers who are in the general vicinity, quite often results in a return chuff.
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Birth:
Both males and females become sexually mature at 3 to 4 years of age. The gestation period lasts from 93 to 111 days, with litter size averaging 2 to 3 cubs, and there are normally 2 to 3 years between litters.
The average litter size of tigers is 2 or 3 cubs (the largest is 5). One usually dies at birth. Tiger cubs are born blind and weigh only about 1 kg, depending on the subspecies. They live on their mother's milk for 6-8 weeks before the female begins taking them to kills to feed. They begin making their own kills at about 18 months of age.
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Age:
The life span of tigers in the wild is thought to be about 10 to 15 years. Tigers in zoos live to be between 16 and 20 years old.
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Weight:
Siberian tigers are the heaviest subspecies at 225 kg, with males heavier than females. The lightest subspecies is the Sumatran; males weigh about 110 kg and females around 90 kg.
Male Bengal tigers average 2.9 metres from head to tail and weigh about 220 kilograms Females are smaller measuring about 2.5 metres in length and weighing approximately 140 kilograms
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BEHAVIOUR |
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Living Alone:
Unlike some big cats like lions, adult tigers like to live alone (except for mother tigers with cubs). This is partly because in the forest, a single tiger can sneak up and surprise its prey better than a group of tigers can.
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Scent Marking:
Tigers mark their territories by spraying bushes and trees with a special mixture of urine and scent gland secretions. They also leave scratch marks on trees.
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Eating:
Tigers hunt alone, actively searching for prey more often than waiting in ambush. In late afternoon the tiger rises from its rest and begins the search for prey. The tiger's attack is generally from the side or from the rear. The killing bite is generally made in the throat or nape area by the canine teeth, controlled by immensely powerful jaw muscles, frequently breaking the neck in the process. Tigers do not easily catch their prey, successful hunts occur in only three out of approximately 10 attempts.
Tigers are typically solitary hunters. Wild tigers can eat as much as 40 pounds of meat at one time. After eating a lot, they often do not eat again for several days. Over much of the tiger's broad geographic range, wild pig, wild cattle and several species of deer are its major prey. Unlike wild tigers which kill their prey and then gorge, tigers that live in captive bred facilities eat a prepared diet of horsemeat and vitamins daily. They may eat as much as 10 pounds of meat per day.
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Breeding:
Mating may take place as many as 100 times over a period of several days. After a gestation period averaging 104 days, a litter of two to five cubs is born with an average of two surviving to adulthood.
The cubs are born blind and helpless, weighing about 2.2 pounds each. Their eyes open during the second week and they begin to supplement mother's milk with meat at about eight weeks of age, and are fully weaned at six months, becoming totally independent by 18 months.
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Territory:
Young tigers leave their mother's range at anywhere from a year and a half to three years of age, depending on whether the mother has another litter. Females tend to stay closer to the mother's range than males.
Most Bengal tigers live in India, although some range through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar.
The Bengal tiger lives in a wide range of habitats, including the high-altitude, cold, coniferous Himalayan forests, the steaming mangroves of the Sunderbans, the swampy reedlands, the scorched hills of the Indian peninsula, the lush wet forests of Northern India, and the arid forests of Rajasthan.
Tigers employ a number of methods to claim exclusive right to its territory. Urine ejected during spray marking of territorial boundaries, often at intervals of 50 feet and less, smells musky and pungent, often lingering several months. Scratching especially prominent trees, along the territorial boundaries, may also serve as a visual no trespassing signpost.
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Swimming:
All cats will swim if they are forced to, but most species carefully avoid water except to drink. Only the tiger and jaguar seem to relish bathing and cooling off in ponds, lakes and rivers. Often inhabiting the steamy jungles of India and Asia, tigers discovered that water was a convenient coolant and are often found sitting or lying immersed to the neck in rivers or pools.
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Extinct Tigers:
Tigers are an endangered species; only about 4,000 to 6,000 tigers are left in the wild. Three tiger subspecies are considered to have become extinct in the past 70 years, the Caspian tiger, the Javan tiger and the Bali tiger.
The Caspian tiger once ranged in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Mongolia, and the Central Asiatic area of Russia and probably went extinct in the 1950s.
The Javan tiger formerly ranged on the Indonesian Island of Java and was last seen in 1972.
The Bali tiger once lived on Bali, where the last tiger was believed to have been killed in 1937. As far as we know, no photos of the Bali tiger exist.
Overall, there are probably no more than 2500 breeding adult tigers in the wild.
There is a continuing decline all over their range due to poaching, persecution, and habitat loss.
Preservation programs are under way. Zoos are developing captive breeding programs, and conservation organizations are trying to prevent further habitat loss.
The range of the tiger has undergone a drastic reduction. In the early 1900's there were in excess of 100,000 tigers in their native Asia, including about 40,00 in India. By the early 1970's the world population of these cats had been reduced to as few as 4,000 individuals.
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LEGENDS & MYTHS |
Many legends surround the tiger, one of the most persistent has been the story of the "jungle ghost", a white tiger. In 1951 the legend proved to be true when a white male was captured in the Indian district of Rewa. Over the past 100 years only about a dozen white tigers have been reported in India, and interestingly only in the Bengal subspecies, suggesting that the mutation occurs in only one out of every 10,000 wild births. The white tiger population in today’s zoos traces its ancestry to a single white male named Mohan collected in 1951. Successive inbreeding in captive populations for the variation has resulted in the approximately 250 white tigers in existence today.
In many Asian cultures, tigers were a symbol of strength and royal power and were used as "executioners" in Asian courts.
In the Hindu religion, the God Shiva rides a tiger and wears a tiger skin for his role as destroyer.
In the Buddhist religion, followers of Buddha ride tigers to show their supernatural ability to overcome evil.
Tigers were treated as God by many of the forest dwelling peoples of India and great temples and shrines were constructed to worship the tiger.
The followers of Islam, in Sumatra, believe tigers punish sinners for Allah.
Paintings of tigers asleep among Buddhist monks were meant to symbolize the religion's power to tame the mystical forces of nature.
In the 20th century, Chinese artists used the tiger as a national symbol.
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