Tigers

Tigers:

(Panthera tigris) are mammals of the Felidae family and one of four "big cats" in the Panthera genus. A group of big cats are called an "ambush" or a "streak". They are predatory carnivores and the largest and most powerful of all living cats.

Most live in forests and grasslands (for which their camouflage is ideally suited). Among the big cats, only these cats and jaguar are strong swimmers; they are often found bathing in

They hunt alone and eat primarily medium-sized herbivores such as deer, wild pigs, and buffalo. However, they will also take larger or smaller prey on occasion.

Humans are their only serious predator and often kill them illegally for their fur or penises. Their penises are used as aphrodisiacs in Chinese Medicine rather than for food. Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced their population in the wild, and it has been placed on the endangered species list.

Physical characteristics

The males are between 2.6 and 3.3 metres (8 ft 6 in and 10 ft 9 in) in length, and the females are between 2.3 and 2.75 metres (7 ft 6 in and 9 ft) in length.

Of the living subspecies, Sumatrans are the smallest, and Amur (Siberian) variety are the largest.

A common recessive variant is the white variety, which may occur with the correct combination of parents. They are not true albinos. Black or melanistic also have been reported, but no live specimen has ever been captured or photographed.

Another variant, the golden tabby variety of these big cats(also called the "golden" or "tabby tiger"), has a golden hue, much lighter than the colouration of normal tigers, and brown stripes. This form is very rare, and only a handful of the golden tabby varity are known to exist, all in captivity.

There are also old texts referring to 'blue'or 'Maltese', actually a silvery-grey tone, though no reliable evidence has been found.

The stripes of most of these cats vary from brown or grey to pure black, although the white variety have far fewer apparent stripes. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies, but most have in excess of 100 stripes.

The now extinct Javan vairety may have had far more than this. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people.

This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of this wild feline.

It seems likely that the purpose of stripes is camouflage, serving to hide these animals from their prey (few large animals have colour vision as capable as that of humans, so the colour is not as great of a problem as one might suppose).

The stripe pattern is found on their skin and if you shaved one, you would find that its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved.

Tiger rivals

Some of their natural prey species can be dangerous if not killed instantly; water buffalo (the wild variety) is an extremely aggressive beast with deadly horns. They are arguably the most difficult prey in this cats menu.

Elephants, on the other hand, are way too big when full grown, but calves are attacked single-handedly by the most powerful feline species in the world, and sometimes a tiger will attack an adult elephant if there are people riding it (most of the time these are defensive attacks, for example a tigress protecting her cubs).

Even grown up elephants become nervous when they hear the roar of this cat, or even when they smell its scent.

These cats are known to kill crocodiles when they find them far from the water, but crocodiles can be dangerous to big cats if they are in their element. Probably the greatest rival of this species (besides other tigers and man) is the bear.

These cats in India share their jungles and forests with the sloth bear. This animal is much smaller than they are, but its extremely aggressive and it reportedly attacks them when cornered or startled.

However, in a face to face fight, the sloth bear is almost always the loser. In Russia, Siberian Tigers and Brown Bears are enemies. They are known to kill large male bears, but sometimes the bear is the one who kills the tiger.

Subspecies

Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Russia, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China and southeast Asia, including the Indonesian islands.

These are the surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population:


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