Talking about Tigers

 

Today I will be talking about Tigers

Chapters:

1. About Tigers

2. Etymology

3. Taxonomy

3.1 Subspecies

3.2 Evolution

3.3 Hybrids

4. Description

4.1 Size

4.2 Colour variations

5. Distribution and habitat

6. Behaviour and ecology

6.1 Social and daily activities

6.2 Hunting and diet

6.3 Enemies and competitors

6.4 Reproduction and life cycle

7. Conservation

8. Relation with humans

8.1 Tiger hunting

8.2 Body part use

8.3 Man eating tigers

 

1: About Tigers

The tiger is known as a cat species and is the biggest cat species in the world. I’m not sure why it’s considered a “ cat species “. The tiger is also a member of the genus Panthera. It is most recognizable for its dark vertical stripes with orange fur with white fur under its body. An apex predator, it primarily preys on ungulates, such as the animals I’m about to say such as, deer, and wild boar. It is territorial and generally a solitary but social predator, requiring large contiguous areas of habitat to support its requirement for its prey and rearing of during its offspring. Tiger cubs usually stay with their mother for about two years and then they become independent by themselves leaving their mother’s home range to establish their own life.

The tiger was first scientifically described in 1758. It once ranged widely from the Eastern Anatolia Region in the west to the Amur River basin in the east, and in the south from the foothills of the Himalayas to Bali in the Sunda Islands. Since the early 20^th century, tiger populations have lost an insane amount of about 93% of their historic range and have been extirpated from Western and Central Asia, the islands of Java and Bali, and in large areas of Southeast and South Asia and China. What remains of the range where tigers still roam free is fragmented, stretching in spots from Siberian temperate forests to subtropical and tropical forests on the Indian subcontinent, Indochina, and a single Indonesian island, Sumatra.

The tiger is now listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. As of 2015, the global fires around the world infected the wild tiger population was estimated to number between 3,062 and 3,948 mature individuals, with the most of them living in a small, isolated pockets. India is currently the host of the largest tiger population. Major reasons for population decline are habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation, and poaching. Tigers are also the victims of human wildlife conflict, due to the encroachment in countries with a high amount of human population density.

The tiger is among the most and popular of the world’s charismatic megafauna. It is featured prominently in the ancient mythology and folklore that off cultures throughout its historic range and continues to be depicted in modern films and literature, appearing on many flags, coats of arms, and also as mascots for sporting teams. The tiger is also the national animal of India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and also South Korea.

Etymology

The Middle English tigre and Old English tigras derive from Old French tigre, from Latin Tigris. This was a borrowing of Classical Greek “ Tigris “, a foreign borrowing of unknown origin meaning the word “  tiger “ and the river Tigris. The origin may have been the Persian world tigra ( as it was pointed or sharp ) and the Avestan word tigrhi ( arrow ), perhaps it was referring to the speed of the tiger’s leap, although these words and not known to have any meaning associated with tigers.

The generic name Panthera is derived from the Latin word “ panthera “ and the Ancient Greek word “ panther “.

Taxonomy

In 1759, Carl Linnaeus described the tiger in his work Systema Naturae and gave it the scientific name as Felis tigris, In 1929, the British taxonomist Reginald Innes Pocock subordinated the species under the genus Panthera using the scientific name Panthera tigris.

Sub Species

Following from Carl Linnaeus first descriptions  of the species, several tiger specimens were described and proposed as sub species. The validity of several tigers’ sub species was questioned in 1999. While most putative sub species described in 19^th and 20^th centuries were distinguished on basis of fur and length and also the colouration, striping patterns, and body size, hence characteristic that vary widely within populations. Morphologically, tigers from different regions vary little, and gene flow between populations in those regions  is considered to have been possible during the Pleistocene. Therefore, it was proposed to recognize only two tiger sub species as valid namely P. t tigris in mainland Asia, and P. t. sondaica in the Greater Sunda Islands.

Results of the craniological analysis of 111 tiger skulls from the Southeast Asian range countries indicate that Sumatran tiger skulls differ from Indochinese and Javan tiger skulls, whereas Bali tiger skulls are similar in size to Javan tiger skulls. The authors proposed to classify the Sumatran and Javan tigers as distinct species as, P. sumatrae and P. sondaica, with the Bali tiger as subs species P. sondaica balica.

In 2015 , morphological, ecological, and molecular traits of all putative tiger sub species were analysed in a combined approach. Results support distinction of the two evolutionary groups continental and Sunda tigers. The authors were proposed recognition of the only two sub species as namely, P. t tigris comprising the Bengal, Malayan, Indochinese, South Chinese, Siberian, and finally the Caspian tiger populations, and P.t sondaica comprising the Javan, Bali, and Also the Sumatran tiger populations. The authors also realised and noted that this reclassification affect the tiger’s conservation management. The nominate sub species P. t tigris also constitutes two clades.

-        A northern clade composed of the Siberian and Caspian tiger populations. And also, the next one.

-        A southern clade composed of all the others mainland populations.

One conservation specialist welcomed this proposal as it would make captive breeding programmes and future rewilding of zoo born tigers easier than before ever. One geneticist was sceptical of this study and decided to be maintain that the currently recognised nine sub species can be distinguished genetically.

In 2017, the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group revised the felid taxonomy and recognized the tiger population in the continental Asia as P. tigris and those in the Sunda Islands as another one called P. t sondaica. This two sub species view has been largely rejected by researchers. Results as of 2018 whole genome sequencing of 32 specimens support six monophyletic tiger clades corresponding with the living sub species and indicate that the most recent common ancestors which lived about over 110,000 years ago ( 11000 decades, 1100 centuries ). The following tables are based on the classification of the species Panthera tigris provided Mammals Species of the World. It also reflects about the classification used by the Cat Classification Task Force in 2017:

                                                    

 

 

                                                    Panthera tigris tigris  ( Linnaeus, 1758 )

Populations	Description	Image of the Tiger
Bengal tiger	Linnaeus’s scientific description of the tiger was based on descriptions by earlier naturalists by such names as, Conrad Gessner, and also Ulisse Aldrovandi who explored them. Bengal tiger skins in the collection of the now museum called Natural History Museum, located at the London area museum which vary from light yellow stripes to reddish  yellow up with black stripes of skin.
Caspian tiger	Liliger’s description was not based on the particular species of specimen, but the description is based that he only assumed that tiers in the Caspian area differ from those elsewhere. It was later described as having a narrow body and closely set stripes. The size of the Caspian tiger did not differ significantly from that of the Bengal tiger ( Different type of tiger ). It had been recorded in the wild until the early 1970’s when it was considered sadly extinct during the late 20th century
Siberian tiger	Temminck’s description was based on an unspecified number of the tiger skins with long hair added by dense coats which were traded between Korea and also Japan. He assumed they originated from the mountains called “ Altai Mountains “. The Siberian tiger was later described as having pale coats with only a few dark brown stripes on its fur skin.
South China tiger	Hilzeimer’s description was based on the five tiger skulls which were purchased in the city Hankou, Located at the southern China part. These skulls were different in the size of their teeth and their jaw bones too by just a few a cm from skulls of tiers from India. Skin of tigers from southern China in the fur trade were said to be a vivid type of orange in color of their fur and with a rhombus like stripes. Because of the differences in the shape of the tiger skulls which were purchased., It was long thought to constitute the most ancient variety. It was noted to have a unique MTDNA haplotype too.
Indochinese tiger	Mazak’s description was based on 25 specimens which are now in museum collections and that they were smaller than tigers from India and had smaller skulls.
Malayan tiger	It was proposed as a distinct sub species on a basis of mtDNA and micro satellite sequences that differ from the Indochinese that we talk about. In pelage color of skull size, it does not differ significantly from the Indochinese tigers which basically means it’s not a big difference between the Malayan tigers with the Indochinese tiger. There is no clear geographical barrier between the tiger populations in the northern part of Malaysia and southern part of Thailand too.

 

                                                Panthera tigris sondaica

Populations	Description	Image of the tiger
Javan Tiger	Temminck based on the tiger description or an unspecified of tiger skin with short hair and smooth hair. Tigers from Java were small compared to tigers of the Asian mainland.
Bali tiger	Schawarz based his description on a skin and a skull of an adult female tiger from Bali. He argued around that the tiger fur colour was brighter and its sull was unusually smaller than the other tigers from Java. A Typical feature of Bali tiger skulls is the narrow part of their occipital plane, which is analogous with the shape of skulls of Javan tigers.
	Pocok described as a dark skin fur tiger from Sumatra as the type of specimen that had numerous and densely set broad stripes. Its skull was a little larger than the skull of the Bali Tiger. It is the smallest of all living tigers living right now on earth. The reason for its unusually small head compared to the average are still today unclear on why its smaller. But they are probably the result of insulara dwarfism especially competition for the limited and small prey. The population is thought to be of mainland of Asian origins and to have been isolated about for 6,000 to 12,000 years ago ( 600 decades, 60 centuries up to 1200 decades, 120 centuries ) after a rise in sea level created the island now, we call Sumatra.

 

Evolution

The tiger’s closest living relatives were previously thought to be another animal of the lion species called “ Panthera “ which were part of the species of lions, leopards, and also jaguars. The results of the genetic analysis indicate about 2.88 million years ago, the tiger and the snow leopard lineages diverged from the other Panthera species, and that both may be more closely related to each other than to the lion, leopard, and jaguar. The geographic origin of the Panthera is most likely origins from the Northern Central Asia. The tiger snow leopard lineage dispersed in Southeast Asia during the Miocene.

Panthera zdanskyi is considered to be a sister taxon of the new modern tiger. It lived at the begging of the Pleistocene which is thought to be about 2 million years ago, its fossil were excavated in the Gansu of north western of China. It was smaller and more “ primitive “, but functionally and ecologically similar to the modern tiger. It is disputed as to whether it had striping pattern. North western China is thought to be the origins of the tiger lineage. As the Tigers grew in size, possibly in response to adaptive radiations of prey species for example like the deer and bovids, which may have occurred in the South east Asia during the Early Pleistocene.

Panthera tigris trinilensis lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known from fossils which were excavated near the Trinil in Java. The Wanhsien, Ngandong, Trinil, and Japanese tigers became extinct during the prehistoric times. Tigers which had reached India and northern Asia during the late Pleistocene, reaching Eastern Beringia, Japan, and also Sakhalin. Some fossil skulls are morphologically distinct from lion skulls, which could also indicate that the tiger presence in Alaska during the las glacial period, which was about 100,000 years ago.

In the Ille Cave on the Island called the island of Palawan, two articulated phalanx bones were found amidst an assemblage of other animal bones and stone tools. They were smaller than the usual mainland tiger fossils, it was possibly due to the insular dwarfism. It has been speculated that the tiger parts were either imported from a different region area, or that the tiger was colonised Palawan from Borneo before the Holocene. Fossil remains of tigers were also excavated in Sri Lanka, China, Japan, and also Sarawak dating to the date of the Lat Pleistocene and the Holocene, but whether it went extinct in the prehistoric times or later or before has been solved even till today it still remains a mystery.

Results of phylogeographic study indicate that all living tigers had a common ancestor dating back all the way to 108,000 years ago to 72,000 years ago. The potential tiger range during the late Pleistocene and Holocene was predicted by applying ecological niche modelling based on more than 500 tiger’s locality records combined with the bioclimatic data base. The resulting model shows a contiguous tiger range at the Last Glacial Maximum, indicating the gene flow between the tiger population through out the corridors below the elevation of 4,000 meters ( 13,000 feet ) in the Hindu Kush. The tiger populations on the Sunda Islands and mainland Asia were possibly separated during the interglacial periods of earth time.

The tiger’s full genome sequence was published at the dating all the way back till 2013. It was said to be found  to have a similar repeat composition to the other cat genomes and an appreciably conserved synteny.

Hybrids

Captive tigers were bred with lions to create hybrids which are now called liger and tigon. They share their physical behavioural qualities of both parents’ species. Breeding hybrids is now discouraged due to the emphasis on both conservations. The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Ligers are typically between 10 up to 12 feet ( 3 meters up to 3.7 meters ) in length and weighs up to 800 till 1,000 lb ( 360 kg up to 450k kg ) or even more. Because of the lion sire passes on  a growth promoting gene, but the corresponding growth inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, the ligers will grow far larger than their ether parent species.

The less common “ tigon “ is a cross between the lions and the male tiger. Because the male tiger does not pass on a growth promoting gene and the lioness passes on a growth inhibiting gene, tigons are around or about the same size as their parents. Some females are fertile and have occasionally given birth to “ litigons “ when mated to a male Asiatic lion.

Description

The tiger has a muscular body with very strong forelimbs, a large head and tail that is about half the length of its entire both. Its pelage colouration varies between shades of orange with white underside and distinctive vertical black stripes; the patterns of the tiger furs is pretty unique for each individual of tiger species. Stipes is likely advantageous for camouflage in vegetation such as long grass with strong vertical patterns of light and shade. The tiger is one of only a few striped cat species; it is known why spotted patterns and rosettes are the more common camouflage pattern among felids. The orange colour may also aid in camouflage as the tiger’s prey are usually dichromats, and thus thy may perceive the cat as green and blended in with the vegetation.

A tiger’s coat pattern is still visible when it is shaved. This is not due to skin pigmentation, but to the stubble and hair follicles embedded in the skin. It has a mane like heavy growth of fur around the neck and jaws and long whiskers too, especially in the male’s species of tiger. The pupils are circular with their yellow irises. With the tiger small, rounded ears have a prominent white spot on the back of it, which is surrounded by black. These spots are thought to play an important in a intraspecific communication between the other tiger’s.

The tiger skull is pretty similar to a lion’s skill, with its frontal region, which is usually less depressed or flattened, and a slightly longer of its postorbital region. The lion skull shows broader nasal openings. Due to the many variations of their species skull sizes of the 2 species ( tiger and lions ), the structure of their lower jaw is reliable indicator for their identification. The tiger has a fairly stout teeth; and it is somewhat curved canines are the longest among all of the living felids with a crown height of up to 90 mm ( 3.5 in ).

Size

There is notable sexual dimorphism between male and female tigers, with the latter being consistently smaller. The size difference between them both is a proportionally greator in the large tiger sub species, with the males weighing a whopping 1.7 times more than the average female species weigh. Males also have wider forepaw pads, which able people to identify which type of gender they are by their tracks by how big the foot print they are. Bigger = male, Smaller = Female. It has been hypothesised that the body size of different tiger populations may be correlated with the climate and be explained by thermoregulation and Bergmann’s rule, or by distribution and size of the available prey species they have around them.

Generally, males vary in total length from 250 cm to 390 cm ( around 98 inches up to 154 inches ) and weigh in between 90 kg up to 300 kg ( 200 lb up to 660 lb ) with skulls reaching lengths from 316 mm up to 383 mm ( 12.4 inches up to 15.1 inches ). Females vary in total length from 200 cm up to 275 cm ( 79 in up to 108 in ), weigh 65 kg 167 kg ( 143 lb up to 368 lb ) with skull length ranging up to 268 mm up to 318mm ( 10.6 in up to 12.5 in ). In either gender, both of their tails can represent up to 0.6 m up to 1.1m ( 2 ft 0 in up to 3 ft 7 in ) of the total length of the tail by its self. The Bengal and Siberian tigers are amongst the tallest cats in shoulder height. They are also ranked among the biggest cats that have ever existed on earth reaching weights up to even more than 300 kgs ( 660 lb ). The tigers of the Sunda islands are smaller and less heavy than the tigers which live on mainland at Asia, which rarely exceeding 142 kg ( 313 lb ) in weight.

Colour variations

There are three colour variants of tigers – for example, White, Golden, and a nearly stripe less snow white – that are now virtually non existent in the wild due to the reduction of the wild tiger populations during these horrible climate changes years, but they still continue in captive populations. The white tiger has white fur and sepia brown stripes. As for the golden tiger has a pale golden pelage with a blond tone and reddish brown stripe’s theme. The snow white tiger is a morph with an extremely fainted stripes and pale reddish brown ringed tail. Both snow white and golden tigers are homozygous for CORIN gene mutations.

The white tiger lacks pheomelanin ( which creates the tiger orange fur colour ) and has a dark sepia brown stripes and blue eyes too. This altered pigmentation is caused by a mutant gene which is inherited as an autosomal recessive trait, which is also determined by a white locus. It is not an albino, as the dark pigments are scarcely affected. The mutation changes a single amino acid which is in the transporter protein called “ SLC45A2 “. Both of the parents need to have the allele for the whiteness to have white cubs. Between the early and mid-20^th century, white tigers were recorded and shot in the Indian states of Odisha, Bihar, Assam and in the area of Rewa, Madhya Pradesh. The local maharaja started breeding tigers in the early 1950’s and kept a wite male tiger together with its normal coloured daughter; they still had white cubs. To preserve this recessive trait, only a few white individuals were used in captive breeding, which led to a high degree of inbreeding. Inbreeding depression is the main reason for many health problems of captive white tigers, which also incudes the strabismus, stillbirth, deformities, and also premature death. Other physical defects include cleft palate and scoliosis.

The Tiger Species Survival Plan has condemned the breeding of white tigers, alleging they are of mixed ancestry and of unknown lineage. The genes responsible for white colouration are represented by 0.001% of the population. The disproportionate growth in numbers of white tiger’s points to inbreeding among homozygous recessive individuals. This would lead to inbreeding and loss of their genetic variability.

There are also some records of pseudo melanic or black tigers which have a thick stripe which merge together. In the Simlipal National Park, around 37% of the tiger population there has this condition, which has been linked to isolation and also inbreeding.

Distribution and habitat

The tiger historically ranged from eastern Turkey and Transcaucasia to the coast of the Sea, which is owned by Japan, and also from South Asia all across Southeast Asia ending up to the Indonesian islands called, Sumatra, Java and also Bali. Since the end of the last glacial period, it was probably restricted by the periods of the deep snow lasting longer than 6 months. Currently, it only occurs in less than 6% of its historical range, as it has been extirpated from the Southwest and also Central Asia, large parts of the Southeast and East Asia too. It now mainly occurs around the Indian Subcontinent, the Indochinese Peninsula, Sumatra Island and also the Russian Far East. In China and Myanmar, breeding populations which appears to rely on the immigration from the neighbouring countries while its status in the Korean Peninsula is currently still unknown.

The tiger is essentially associated with the forest habitats. Tiger populations thrive where populations of the wild cervids, bovids and also suids are stable. Records around the Central Asia indicates that it occurred foremost in the Tugay riverine inhabited hilly and lowland forests. Historical records in Iran are known only from the southern coast area of the Caspian Sea and also the adjacent Alborz Mountains. In the Amur Ussuri region, it inhabits the Korean pine and also the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, which were riparian forests provide food and water too, and serve as dispersal corridors for both tiger and also ungulates. On the Indian subcontinent, it inhabits mainly tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, moist evergreen forests, tropical dry forests, and also the swamp forest at the Sundarbans. In the Eastern Himalayas, the tigers were documented in the temperate forest up to an elevation up to 4,200 m ( around 13,800 ft ) in Bhutan and of       3630 m ( 11,910 ft ) in the Mishmi Hills. In Myanmar, the tigers are distributed all across the country and among very provinces. The country is home to two tiger populations, Bengal, and also Indochinese tigers. In 1996, the composition of the two population was an incredible amount of 60% Bengal tigers and around 40% Indochinese tigers. The natural ecological divide for these two populations is assumed that to be the Irrawaddy River, but there is no scientific evidence for that hypothesis / myth. DNA studies are needed to confirm the hypothesis for it to be true or not. Today, the presence of the tigers was confirmed in the Hukawng Valley, Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary, and also in two small areas in the Tanintharyi Region too. The Tenasserim Hills is an important area, but forests are harvest there. In 2015, the tigers were recorded by secret camera traps for the first time in the hill forests of Kayin State. In Thailand, it lives in the deciduous and evergreen forests. In Loas, 14 tigers were also documented in the semi evergreen and ever green forest which interspersed with the grassland at the Nam Et Phou Louey National Protected Area which during the surveys during the time of 2013 to 2017. In Sumatra, the tiger populations can range from the low land peat swamp forests to rugged montane forests.

Behaviour and ecology

Social and daily activities

When not subject to the human disturbance, the tiger is mainly diurnal. It doesn’t really often climb trees but there are some cases which have been recorded. It is a strong swimmer and often bathes inside ponds, lakes, and also rivers, thus which keeps the cool of the tiger in the heat of the day. Individuals can cross rivers up to 7 km ( 4.3 mi ) wide and can swim up to an insane 29 km ( 18 mi ) in a single day. During the 1980’s, a tiger was observed frequently hunting their prey through the deep water of the lake water in the Ranthambhore National Park.

The tiger is a long ranging species, and the individuals disperse over the distance up to all the way of 650 km ( 400 mi ) to reach the other tiger populations in the other areas. Radio collared tigers located at the Chitwan National Park started dispersing from their natal areas earliest at the age of just 19 months old. Four females dispersed between 0 all the way to 43.2 km ( 0.0 mi up to 26.8 mi ), and also 10 males between up to 9.5 to 65.7 km ( 5.9 mi up to 40.8 mi ). And none of them crossed open as a cultivated areas that were more than 10 km ( 6.2 mi ) wide but moved through their forested habitat.

Adult tigers usually lead largely solitary lives. They establish maintain territories but have much wider home ranges within which they roam in the area. Residents of the adults of either gender generally confine to their movements to their home ranges, within which they satisfy their needs and those of their growing their cubs. Individuals sharing the same area are aware of each other’s movements and activities to be able to gain the trusts of each other.  The size of their home range mainly depends on their prey abundance, geographic area and also the gender of the individual of the tiger. In India, home ranges appear to be 50 to 1,000 km ( 19 sq mi up to all the way 386 sq mi ) while in the Machuria they range from 500 km to 4,000 km ( 190 sq mi up to 1,540 sq mi ). In Nepal, defended territories are recorded to be a a lot to 19 to 151 km ( 7.3 sq mi up to 58.3 mi ) for males and a little less from 10 km up to 51 km ( 3.9 sq mi up to 19.7 sq mi ) for the female of the tigers.

Young female tigers establish their territories which are close to their mothers’ territories. The overlap between the female and her mother’s territory reduces with the time. However, for males, migrate further than their female counterparts and set out at a younger age to mark out their own area to be in. A young male acquires territory either by seeking out an area of devoid of the other male tigers or by living as transient in another male’s territory until he is older and strong enough to challenge the resident male around his area. Young males seeking to establish themselves thereby comprise the highest mortality rate ( around 30 – 35% per year ) amongst the adult tigers.

To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying their urine and onto the tree to mark it but the other ways are, anal gland secretions, marking trails with feces and marking the trees or the ground with their claws to dig it up. Females also uses these “ scrapes”, urine, and fecal markings. Scent markings on this type allows to pick up information on another tiger’s identity for example, the gender and also the reproductive status. Females in oestrus will signal their availability by scent marking more frequently and more increasing their vocalisations.

Although for the most part avoiding of each other, tigers are not always territorial and relationships between the individuals can also be complex for them. An adult tiger of either genders will sometime share its kill with others, even if they are unrelated together. George Schaller observed a male share a kill with two females and four cubs. Unlike the male lions, male tigers allow females and cubs to feed on the kill before the male tiger is finished with the kill. All involved generally seem to behave amicably, in contrast to the competitive behaviour show by a lion pride. Stephen Mills described a social feeding event in the Ranthambore National Park.

A dominant tigress that they called Padmini killed a whopping 250 kg ( 550 lb ) male nilgai. A very large antelope. They found her at the kill around the time after dawn with her 3 cubs which re 14 months old cubs and they watched in unterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period of time the family was also joined by two adult females and one adult male, all offspring from Padmini’s previous litters, and also by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o’clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.

Male tigers are generally less tolerant of other females. Territory disputes are usually solved by the intimidation rather the outright violence of fighting each other. Several such incidents have been observed in which the subordinate tiger yielded by rolling onto its back and showing their belly in a submissive posture. Once the dominance has been established, a male may tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long they do not live too close together or too close in the quarters. The most serious disputes tend to occur between two males and competing for a female in oestrus, sometimes fighting to the death.

Facial expressions also include the “ defense threat “, where in aggressive situations during the mating season or when making a kill. There are also two different types of roars: the “ true “ roar is made by using their hyoid apparatus and forced through an open  mouth as it progressively closes, and the shorter harsher " coughing “ roar is a made with the mouth open and also the teeth exposed. The “ true “ roar can be heard all the way up to 3 km ( 1.9 mi ) away and is sometimes emitted three or four times in succession. And when tense, tigers will moan, a sound similar to a roar but in a more subdued voice and when the mouth is partially or completely closed. Moaning can be heard at a shorter distance of 400 m ( 1,300 ft ) a way. Don’t get me wrong that’s still very far away. Chuffing soft, low frequency snorting which is similaring to purring in smaller cats is heard in more friendly situations. Other vocalizations include the grunts, woofs, snarls, miaows, hisses and finally also growls.

Hunting and Dieting

In the wild, tigers mostly feed on large and medium sized mammals, particularly ungulates which weighs about 60 kg up to 250 kg ( 130 lb up to 550 lb ). The most significantly preferred species are sambar deer, wapiti, barasingha and wild boar too. Tigers are capable of taking down a larger prey like an adult gaur and also a wild water buffalo but will also opportunistically eat much smaller prey, such as the monkeys, the peafowl and other ground based birds like, the hares, the porcupines, and also the fish. They also prey on other predators, which includes dogs, leopards, pythons, bears, and also crocodiles. Tigers generally do not prey on a fully grown adult elephants or Asian elephants and also Indian rhinoceros but incidents of tigers trying to eat both of them have been reported. More often, it is usually the most vulnerable small calves that are taken. And when in close proximity to humans, the tigers will also sometimes prey on a such domestic live stock as cattle, horses, and donkeys. Although almost exclusively carnivorous, tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for a dietary fibre such as the fruit of the slow match tree.

Tigers are thought to be mainly nocturnal predators, but in the areas where the humans are absent, remote controlled, hidden camera traps recorded them hunt hunting in the daylight. They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any single angle, by just using their body and strength to knock out their opponents to make them fall down for the tiger to do the most damage. Successful hunts usually require the tiger to almost simultaneously leap on to its quarry, to knock it  over, and to grab the throat or nape with its teeth. Despite that they are a very large size, and tigers can also reach speed up to about 49 km/h to around 65 km/h ( 30 mph up to 40 mph ) but only in the short bursts; consequently, tigers must be close to their prey before they go faster and break their cover. If the prey senses that the tiger’s presence consequently, tigers usually abandon the hunt rather than give it a chase or keep fighting and pre altered prey. Horizontals leaps of up to 10 m tall ( 33 ft ) has been reported for a tier, although leaps of around half this distance are more typical. One in 2 to 20 hunts, including the stalking near potential prey, ends in a usually a successful kill.

When hunting a larger animal than themselves, tigers prefer to bite their throat to do more damage and to make them hurt more and to use their powerful forelimbs to hold onto the bigger preey, often simultaneously wrestling it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its target dies of strangulation. By this method, gaurs and water buffaloes weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. Although they can kill healthy adults, tigers can often select the calves of infirm of very large species. Healthy adult prey of this type can be a very dangerous target because it is hard for them to tackle, as long, strong horns, legs and tusks are all potentially fatal to the tiger when it is trying to tackle it. No other extant land predator routinely takes on the prey this large on its own.

With a small prey such as like a monkey and hairs, the tiger bites the nape, often with the breaking of their spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. Rarely, tigers have been observed to kill their prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of the domestic cattle and break the backs of the sloth bears.

And after they kill their prey, the tigers sometimes drag it to conceal in vegetation so when they are hungry, they can eat it, grasping with their mouths at the site of the killing bite. This, too, can also require great physical strength. Like in one case, after it had killed an adult gaur, a tiger was observed to drag as very big or massive carcass for over a distance of 12 m ( 39 ft ). And when 13 men together tried to move the same carcass that the tiger had moved, they were unable to move it a single meter. An adult tiger can go for up to two weeks without even eating, then gorge on 34 kg ( 75 lb ) of flesh at a single time. In captivity, and  adult tigers are fed 3 kg up to 6 kg ( 6.6 lb up to 13.2 lb ) of meat in each day. That’s a lot of meat that the tigers eat.

Enemies and competitors

Tigers usually prefer to eat the preys that they killed themselves, but their also eat carrion in times of scarcity and also sometime steal the preys from other large carnivores like their own species. Although predators typically avoid one another, if a prize is under dispute or under a serious competitor is encountered upon them. Displays of aggressions are pretty common. If these fails, the conflicts can turn violent very quickly; tigers may even kill or even prey on their competitors such as leopards, dholes, striped hyenas, wolves, bears, pythons, and even mugger crocodiles on occasion. Crocodiles, bears, and also large packs of dholes may win conflicts with tigers, and crocodiles and bear can even kill them.

The considerably smaller leopard like to avoid their competitors from the tigers by hunting at different times than their competitor tiger and they also hunt a different type of prey to lower the chances of getting in a fight with their competitors. In India’s Nagarhole National Park, most of their preys selected by leopards were from 30 kg up to 175 kg ( 66 lb up to 386 lb ) against a preference for the heavier prey by the tigers. The average prey weight in the two respective big cats in India was 37.6 kg ( 83 lb ) against 91.5 kb ( 202 lb ) . With a relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without any competitive exclusion nor any interspecies dominance hierarchies and that may be more common to the African savanna, where leopards usually live beside / near to a lion. Golden jackals may scavenge on tiger kills. Tigers appear to inhabit certain parts of a forest while the smaller predators like leopards and dholes are pushed closer to the fringes area.

Reproduction and life cycle

The tiger mates all year around, but for most cubs, they are born between the months of March and June, with a second peak in September. Gestation ranges about from 93 up to 114 days with an average of 103 to 105 days. A female is only receptive for about three six days. Mating is kind of frequent and usually noisy during that time. The female gives birth in a sheltered location such as in a tall grass area or an area where it is hard for predators to find their cubs, in a dense thicket, cave or rocky crevice. The father generally takes no part in rearing. Litters consist of two or three cubs, rarely as many as six cubs which is an insane number of cubs at once. Cubs can weigh up to around 780 g up to 1,600 g ( 28 oz up to 56 oz ) each at birth, and they are usually born or born with their eyes closed. They open their eyes when they are about 6 days old to about 14 days old. Their milk teeth break through at that age of about two weeks. They start eating meat at that age of eight weeks. At around this time, females usually shift them to a new den. They usually make a short venture with their mother, but they don’t not travel with her as she roams around her own territory until they are older. Females lactate for about 5 up to 6 months. Around the time they are weaned, they start to accompany their mother on her usual territorial walks and are taught on how to hunt for their own food to eat to stay alive and to get their own water and nutrients to stay alive and try to find a mate when they are older and more.

A dominant cub emerges in most litters, and its usually male. The dominant cub is more active than its siblings and takes the lead in their play, eventually leaving its own other and then becoming independent earlier and living by them selves when the get old enough. The cubs start hunting on their own earliest at the age of 11 months and become independent around 18 to 20 months of age. Which for humans that is such a young age but for tigers they have a shorter lifespan so they can learn stuff faster. They usually separate from their own mother at the age of around 2 to about 2 and a half years old, but they continue to grow until they are the age of 5 years old then they have reach adult size, I think. Young females can reach sexual maturity at about three to four years old, whereas the males have to wait for about 4 years up to 5 years old. Unrelated wandering male tigers often kill the cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may be giving birth to another litter just within 5 months and if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. The death rate of the small cubs is about 50% within just the first 2 years. Few other predators attack tiger cubs when seen due to their diligence and ferocity of the mother. Apart from the human’s other tigers, common cause of  the cub mortality rate is due to them starving from not having enough food or maybe sometime dehydration for not having enough water and sometime some of them freeze to death because they don’t have the mother fur to stay warm and finally, they can also die from normal accidents and more.

Occasionally, the male tigers participate in raising the cubs, usually by their own, but this is also very and extremely rare and it is not always well understood by them. In May 2015, Amur tigers were photographed by the camera traps in Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserves. The photos which shows a male Amur tiger pass by. Followed by a female and three cubs within the span of about two minutes. In Ranthambore, a male Bengal tiger raised and also defended the two lost orphaned female cubs after the mother of the cubs had unfortunately died from an illness which made her got sick and died from it. So, the cubs went around and got lost and then the tiger defended them and took care of them. He supplied the orphan cubs with food, water, also protected them from the rivals which were trying to eat them, and also not sure if its proven but also trained the cubs to how to protect them selves and to also how to get food and more.

Conservation

In the 1990’s, a new approach of a tiger conservation was developed: The Tiger Conservation Units (  which stands for TCUs ), which are blocks of habitats that have been the potential to host a tiger’s populations in 15 different types within five bioregions. Altogether 143 TCUs of tigers were identified and prioritized based on the size and integrity of habitat, poaching pressure and population status. They range in the sizes from 33 km up to all the way to 155,829 km2 ( 13 sq mi up to all the way to 60,166 sq mi ).

In 2016, an estimate which was made in 2016 discovered that the global wild tiger population was approximately 3890 individuals of tigers was presented during the Third Asia Ministerial Conference On the Tiger Conservation time. The WWF subsequently declared that the world count of wild tigers had risen or has more tigers for the first time in a century.

Major threats to the tigers which also included habitat destruction from people cutting down trees to natural disasters caused by the global warming, which is also infecting everyone living space, habitat fragmentation, and also poaching for the fur of the tigers of its popularity and its body parts which people want to eat, which is also the reason why the tiger’s population has reduced by a lot in the wild. In India, only around 11% of the historical tiger’s habitat there due to the habitat fragmentation. The demand for the tiger parts in China for their  “ traditional Chinese medicine “ has also been a cited as a giant threat to the tiger populations. Some even estimates that they suggest that there are now fewer than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulations containing at least more than 250 mature breeding individuals. It is very sad to see the tiger population dying out and becoming extinct due to the popularity of the tiger furs and the medicine needing the tigers. Every year the tiger population is going down and down and hopefully we can stop it in the future before it is too late, and the tiger will still have a stable population instead of going down every year.

In India, there is the largest population of wild tigers living there. As of the year of 2014, census estimated that there was a population of about 2,226 wild tigers in India, which is a 30% increase since 2011. On International Tiger Day 2019, the” Tiger Estimation Report of 2018 “ was released by the Prime Minister named “ Narendra Modi “. The reports of the estimates of population of the wild tigers were now 2967 in India, a crazy 25% increase since of 2014. Modi said that “ India is one of the safest habitats for wild tigers as it has achieved the target of doubling the tiger population from 1411 in 2011 to 2967 in 2019. So, in just 8 years India was able to double the amount of tiger’s population. Which if you think about is crazy. As of 2022 right now, India accounts for about 75% of global tiger population all across the world.

In 1973, The India’s Project Tiger, started by a person called “ Indira Gandhi “, decided to be established numerous tiger reserves. The project was credited with tripling the amount of wild Bengal tigers from just  a some of 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990’s, but soon then a 2007 cenus showed that the 3,500 tigers dropped back to around 1,400 tigers because of poaching. Following the report, The Indian government pledged 153 million  dollars to the initiative to set up measures to combat the poaching happening to reduce the population count and promised funds to relocate up to 200,000 villagers in order to reduce the human tiger interactions to prevent more poaching happened and making the number populations of Bengal tigers to drop down again. They decided to set up eight new tiger reserves. India also reintroduced tigers to the Sariska Tiger Reserve and by just 2009 it was claimed that the poaching had been effectively countered at the Ranthambore National Park.

In the 1940’s, the Siberian tiger was on the edge to being on extinction with only 40 more Siberian tigers before extinction and never to be seen again and it was located in the wilds in Russia. As a result, anti-poaching controls were put in place by the Soviet Union and a network of protected zones ( zapovendniks ) were instituted, leading to a rise in population of the Siberian tigers to a total of a several hundreds of Siberian tigers now living today. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990’s, when the economy of Russia collapsed a lot. The major obstacles in preserving’s the species are the enormous territory individual’s tigers require, up to 450 km ( 280 mi ) needed by a single female and single male. Current conservation efforts are mostly led by the local governments and also the NGOs in concert with international organisations, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature and also the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used the Russian conservationists to convince the hunters to tolerate the big cats including tigers. The tigers have now been less impact on the ungulate populations than do wolves and are effective in controlling the latter’s numbers. In the year 2005, there were thought to be around 360 animals in Russia at that time, though these exhibited little genetic diversity. However, in a decade later, the Siberian tiger census was estimated from around 480 individuals up to 540 individuals.

In China, the tigers became a giant target of a large scale of “ anti pest “ campaigns in the early 1950’s where suitable habitats were fragmented following the deforestation and also the resettlement of the people to the rural areas, who hunted tigers and prey’s species and more too. Although tiger hunting in China was prohibited in the 1977, the population continued to decline all over the years and is considered extinct in the southern China ever since 2001. Having earlier rejected the Western-led environmentalist movement, China has now changed its stance in the 1980’s and became a part to the CITES treaty. By the 1993 it had banned the trade market in the tiger parts as it was illegal to kill tigers and sell them, and this diminished the use of the tiger bones in the traditional Chinese medicine which needed tiger’s bones to be made. The Tibetan people’s trade in tiger skins has also been a threat to tigers. The pelts were used in clothing, tiger skin chuba being worn as a fashion design, and in 2006 the 14^th Dalai Lama was persuaded to take up the issue. Since then, there has been a change of attitude against tigers in China with some Tibetans publicly burning their chubas.

In 1994, the Indonesian Sumatran Tiger Conservation Strategy addressed the sad potential crisis that the tigers had to face in the island Sumatra in Indonesia. The Sumatran Tiger Projected ( Known as STP ) was initiated in June 1995 in and around the Way Kambas National Park to ensure the long-term viability of wild Sumatran tigers and to accumulate data on tiger life history characteristics vital for the management of wild populations. By the time of August 1999, the teams of the STP had evaluated 2 sites of a potential tiger habitat which is good located at Lampung Province, of which only 15 of these were intact enough to contain tigers. In the framework of the STP, a community based conservation was able to initiate the document the tiger human dimension in the park to enable conservations authorities to resolve tiger human conflicts based on a comprehensive database rather than an anecdote and also opinions.

The Wildlife Conservation Society and also the Panthera Corporation was able to form a collaboration together and start “ Tigers Forever “, with field sites including the world’s largest tiger reserve, the 21,76 sq km ( 8,400 sq mi ) Hukaung Valley in Myanmar. Other reserves were at the Western Ghats in India, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, the Russian Far East covering in total about 260,000 sq km ( 100,000 sq mi ).

Tigers have been studied in the wild using many variety types of techniques. Tiger populations have been estimated using plaster casts of their pugmarks, although this method was very criticized as being very inaccurate or being more or less tigers. More recent techniques include the use of the camera traps and studies the DNA from the tiger scat, while the radio collaring has been used to track down tigers in the wild. Tiger spray has been found to be just as good, or even better, as a source to find out their DNA than the scat way.

Relationship with humans

Tiger hunting

The tiger that has been one of the most sought after game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took in a place on a large scale in the early times of 19^th century and also the 20^th centuries, which was recognized and admired as a “ sport “ by the British in colonial India, the maharajas and aristocratic of the erstwhile princely states of pre independence India. A single maharaja or English hunter could claim to be able to kill over a hundred tigers in their hunting career. Sadly over 80,000 Tigers were slaughtered in just 50 years spanning from 1875 to 1925 when British ruled India. Tiger hunting was done some hunters on foot; the others would sit on a machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others were on elephants back. When Kin George V was on his visit to the Colonial India in 1911, he killed 39 tigers in a matter of just 10 days. One of these is on display at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

Historically, tigers have actually been hunted at a very large scale so their famous striped skins could be collected for a lot of money because tiger skin was considered a lot of money at that time and nowadays its worth even more. The trade in tiger skins was peaked in 1960’s, just before the international conservation efforts took effect and they acted. By 1977, a tiger skin in a English market was considered an insane amount of 4,250 Dollars. That is very crazy to think about. Like how a piece of Tiger skin can be worth 4,250 Dollars in the English market. Hopefully the market has calmed down a little bit so then tigers won’t be a giant target because of its high value of its fur and skin and meat.

Body part use

Tiger parts are commonly used as “ amulets “ in the South and also Southeast of Asia. In the Philippines, the fossils in Palawan were found besides some stone tools. This, besides the evidence for cuts on the bones, and also the use of fire, suggest that the early humans had accumulated the bones of the tigers, and the condition of the tiger subfossils, was dated back to approximately 12,000 to 9,000 years ago, differed from the other fossils in the assemblage, dated to the Upper Paleolithic times. The tiger subfossils showed longitudinal fracture of the cortical bone due to the weathering, which it suggests that they had post mortem been exposed to light and also air. Tiger canines were also found in the Ambangan sites which they date back to the 10^th to 12^th centuries in Butuan, Mindanao.

Many people in China and other parts of Asia had a belief that a various tiger parts can be used to make medicine to cure people, which includes as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. But the use of the tiger parts in the pharmaceutical drugs in China was already banned, and the government had already made some offences in connection with tiger poaching and punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade which are under by tiger parts are illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and domestic trade bans has been in place in China ever since 1993.

However, the trading of tiger parts in Asia has become a major black market industry behind the scenes and secretly been trading tiger parts on the black market and governmental and conservation tries to attempt to stop the black market industry but sadly it had been ineffective to date.  Almost all black marketers engaged in the trade are based in China and have either been shipped and sold within their own country or into Taiwan, South Korea, Or even Japan. The Chinese subspecies was almost completely decimated by killing for commerce due to the both the parts and skin trades in 1950’s through the 1970’s Contributing to the illegal trade, there are many numbers of tiger farms in the China and other countries specialising in breeding the tigers just to kill them and sell it threw the black market and other animals just to make some profit of them. It is an estimation that between 5,000 up to 10,000 captives bred, semi tame animals live in these farms today. However, man tigers for traditional medicine, the black markets are wild ones shot or snared by poachers and may be caught anywhere in the tigers remaining range ( From Siberia to India to the Malay Peninsula to Sumatra ). In the Asian black market, a tiger private part can be worth up to around 300 U.S. dollars. In the years of 1990 through 1992, over 27 million products with tigers derivates were found. In July 2014 at an international convention on endanger species in Geneva, located in Switzerland, a Chinese representative admitted for the first time his government was aware of the trading of tiger skins which were occurring in China threw the black market.

Man Eating tigers

Wild tigers that have had no prior contact with humans actively avoid interactions with them. However, tigers cause more human deaths through their direct attack than any other wild mammal in the forest.  Attacks are occasionally provoked, as the tiger lash out before being injured by the predator while they are themselves getting hunted. Attacks can be provoked accidently, as when a human surprises a tiger or a inadvertently comes between a mother also her young  child,  or as in a case in rural India when a postman startled a tiger, use to seeing him on foot, by riding a bicycle. Occasionally tigers come to view people as prey. Such as the attacks are the most in areas where the population growth is a lot, logging, and farming have put high pressure on tiger’s habitats and reduced their wild prey. Most man eating tigers are pretty old, with missing teeth in their jaw, and they are unable to catch their preferred preys that they usually hunt and usually eat. For example, The Champawat Tiger, a tigress found in Nepal and then India, had two broken canines. She was responsible for an insane of 430 human deaths, the most attacks known to be perpetrated by a single wild animal, by the time she was shot in 1907 by a person called “ Jim Corbett “. According to Corbett, the tiger attacks on humans usually kill the humans in the day time for the best vision and when the humans are usually just chilling, and when people are working outdoors and not looking at their surroundings and keep their watch. Early writings tend to describe man eating tigers as “ cowardly “ because of their ambush tactics.

Man eaters tigers and other mammals have been a particular problem in the recent decades in the main area like India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and also the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have hunted humans in the past. Because  of the rapid habitat loss which sadly happened because to climate change, the tigers attacks have increased Sundarbans. The Sundarbans area had already 129 human deaths from tigers from just 1969 up to 1971 in just 2 years they were able to kill 129 humans. In the 10 years prior to that period , about a 100 tiger attacks per year in the Sundarbans, with a high of around up to 430 tiger attacks in some years in the 1960’s time. Unusually, in some years in the Sundarbans, more humans are killed by tigers than vice versa. In 1972, India’s production of honey and beeswax dropped by an insane of 50% when at least 29 people who gathered these types of materials were devoured. In 1984 in the Sundarbans, since tigers were almost always attack from the rear, masks with the human faces were worn on the back of the head too, on the theory that tigers usually do not attack if they are seen by their prey. This decreased by the number of attacks but only for a temporarily amount of time. All other means to prevent attacks, such as providing more prey or using electrified human dummies, it did not work as well.

Source: Tiger - Wikipedia