Tigers

Tigers belong to the largest of the cat species. They can reach the length of 3.3 meters or 11 feet and can get as heavy as 306 kilograms or 670 pounds, while also gifted with enough bounding energy to catch their prey. You can easily recognize the tiger through the dark stripes that are stamped on its orange red fur; the combination creates a sharp contrast but the overall effect still allows the tiger to lurk in silence. Though attractive, the tiger can be dangerous to its prey, with its significantly large teeth and long canines, which can reach 74.5 millimeters or 2.93 inches at their crown height. Tigers originate from the Asian continent and are not native to Africa as is often believed. There are Chinese and Bengal tigers that have been resettled into Africa. These animals are commonly released from zoos and introduced for the purpose of extending the survival and habitat of their species.

Longevity
Tigers live long whether you find them in the wild or in the confines of a zoo. Their longevity reaches 26 years, which should have been enough time to breed well. It is not only their size that is large but also its appetite for territory. Though tigers usually prefer living and hunting alone, 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 their habitats. This is food for thought to us all who want to do something to help revive the tiger population.

Habitat and Population

Tigers used to be abundant in Asian countries, including Turkey and Russia. However, the past century has seen the tigers lose almost a hundred percent of the place they used to inhabit. Today, the tiger habitats are living in grasslands, the Siberian tanga and even in the mangrove swamps of the tropics. On writing, it sounds as if there is still a generous patch of land available. There arent a lot of tigers left in general, though. With only six subspecies left, tigers have been declared endangered by the IUCN. Tigers that remained in the forests are only a little more than 3,000 in number. The rest of the tigers, which may have not been included in the count, belong to small, isolated groups that sort of act like family units. The population has suffered a rapid decline due to the destruction of the tigers' homes as well as because of the crime of poaching. So, at this point, the area left inhabited by tigers is at only 184,911 square kilometers or 457,497 square miles. This estimate, however, was good in the 1990s. Today, the area could be a lot smaller.

Remains
The oldest remnants that could be traced back to a catlike creature with tiger-like qualities are ones that belong to the Panthera palaeosinensis. These remains have been discovered in China, as well as in Java. The excavation is quite a feat for the scientific community as the species could be traced back to about two million years ago. The animal was smaller than tigers that we know of today. Remains of tigers, which are ancestors of modern tigers, have also been found in Java. These remains are about 1.6 to 1.8 million years old. Archeologists have also managed to dig up some fossils dating to largely the first half of the Pleistocene age in

Sumatra and China. Fossils that have been found in Trinil, Java are known to belong to a subspecies that has been given the name Trinil tiger or Panthera tigris trinilensis, which has lived around 1.2 million years ago. In the late Pleistocene age, tigers first lived in India, as well as in northern Asia. They also reached Sakhalin and Japan among other areas. Judging from the fossils found in Japan, the local tigers were smaller compared to the ones living in the mainland. This could have been caused by a phenomenon that makes the body size adjust to the available space. Mainland tigers, after all, have more room to run and stretch and have therefore more chances to become larger. For a time, tigers also populated Borneo before the Holocene era arrived. They also once lived in Palawan, which can be found in the Philippines.

Tigers' Hunting Habits

Tigers hunt for prey, which even include fearsome predators such as crocodiles, leopards and pythons. When fighting a crocodile, they go for the eyes using their paws. This occurrence is not even rare. Eighteenth century doctor Oliver Goldsmith has talked about how tigers and crocodiles sometimes fight. This scenario is made possible when thirsty tigers go for a drink by the rivers, where mugger crocodiles live. Usually, the crocodile ends up being disabled while the tiger is able to escape. There are cases, however, where mugger crocodiles end up killing the tigers. In the case of leopards, they try to hunt at different times from tigers to avoid competition. Usually though, leopards and tigers are able to co-exist in peace when there is enough prey to go around. Again, exemptions to the rule exist.

Tigers even go against wolf populations in places where the two species somehow co-exist. It is all about showing who's boss. Packs of wolves do not just go without a fight. They do attack and even kill tigers when the two species clash because of food. This fight, however, finds both sides suffering a lot of losses. Meanwhile, solitary creatures manage to co-exist with tigers. A golden jackal without a pack, for example, will trail a tiger for food. There is even a case of a jackal finding itself among three tigers for the sake of following their trail of food. As for competition between species, Siberian tigers and brown bears can clash because of food. Usually though, both sides would try to avoid a confrontation. Still, there are cases of tigers killing bear cubs, as well as adult bears. A tiger living in the Russian Far East actually includes Asiatic black bears as well as brown bears into 5 to 8 percent of its diet. Brown bears have also been recorded to have killed tigers when defending themselves or avenging or disputing over kills. There have been bears that have left their hibernation to attempt to steal away the tigers kills. Of course, the tigers will also defend their prey. Sloth bears, meanwhile, are aggressive and are fierce enough to shoo away young tigers from their kills. However, adult Bengal tigers usually hunt for sloth bears.

Conserving Tigers
As we have read, tigers hunt and are also being hunted by 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.

Habitat destruction and poaching for tiger fur are the main 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 the fact that traditional Chinese medicine makes use of tiger parts. Alarmingly, the population has rapidly decreased to somewhere between 3,500 and 1,500 wild tigers. There are some estimates that say that there are fewer than 2,500 adult breeding tigers in the wild. There are no 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" as its scientific name in his Systema Naturae. However, in 1929, Reginald Innes Pocock, a British taxonomist has declared the animal part of the genus Panthera. At that time, the tiger has instead become tagged with the scientific name Panthera tigris. Note that Panthera as a word could be Oriental in origin and may even be traced back 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 a yellowish animal, which the tiger is.