The Tiger

A point worth noting is that tigers in the south are quite different in appearance to those in the north of planet. So, I am comparing the very rare and endangered Sumatran and Indonesian tigers with the Amur tiger and even the Bengal tiger which not only lives throughout India in reserves but also on the foothills of Bhutan 4,000 meters above sea level.  Map showing approximate location of northern and southern tiger subspecies. There is a gradual increase in size as you go north. The larger size helps tigers to conserve body heat in cold climates while the opposite is true in hotter climates. Image: MikeB The difference between the 'southern tigers' and those in the north are as follows. The differences are due to evolution. They are considerably smaller. For example, in tropical areas adult male tigers average about 2.2-2.5 metres in length which is about half a metre shorter than males from northern areas. They weigh only 100-140 kg. Adult females in tropical areas weigh be...

The video on this page shows a Bengal tiger in India (I believe) sauntering down a road and behind him/her is one of their classic prey animals, a deer, a mere 50 yards away. The tiger is entirely disinterested, probably sated on a meal not long before but it is a slightly incongruous video because we are used to seeing tigers attacking prey animals at anytime and anywhere within their habitat. This is not the case. Interestingly, when you read about the iconic tiger, you don't really anywhere about tigers shunning their dinner; shunning the chance to attack a prey animal such as we see in the video. We think they simply don't do it and attack anything that comes before them on their travels. This apparently is incorrect. Bengal tiger ignores prime prey behind it no more than 50 metres away. Screenshot. But if a tiger is going to be satisfied with eating almost anything they can catch as my reference book states, it implies that they will attack almost any prey animal but once ...

Yes, Siberian (Amur) and Bengal tigers can definitely mate. They are two subspecies of tiger. They are very similar. In my mind it is like asking whether a person living in the West can mate with a person living in the East. There's nothing stopping it from a DNA point of view. Big Cat Rescue states that crossbreeding Bengal tigers with Siberian tigers might increase the odds of producing white cubs. North China amur tiger crossed with a Bengal cat as shown in a museum specimen. This image comes from messybeast.com courtesy Sarah Hartwell. There is also the issue of mongrel tigers being quite commonplace in zoos and other facilities where tigers are used to entertain customers. They become mongrelised in zoos and circuses. In other words, the tigers are no longer purebred. The tigers that you see in zoos or circuses are often generic tigers and not a definitive subspecies. That's because they been breeding with each other which makes my point. The expert on hybrid wild cats is ...

Guinness World Records have declared that a tiger at Tiger Creek Animal Sanctuary, Tyler, Texas, USA, is the world's oldest captive tiger. Her name is Bengali. She came to the Sanctuary in 2000. The sanctuary say that they like "provide a safe and secure environment for animals in need of rescue or rehabilitation while conserving endangered and threatened species." Bengali the world's oldest living captive tiger at 25 years 319 days. Photo: Guinness World Records. Normally, tigers in captivity live to around 15-20 years. In the wild about 12 years is the norm. Bengali has more than doubled the average wild tiger lifespan. She has no cubs but the sanctuary considers her to be an important part of tiger conservation. They said: "We are extremely honored and very proud to know we have the oldest living tiger in captivity. We care deeply for every animal at Tiger Creek, and keeping Bengali healthy and happy for so many years is an incredible accomplishment for the...

In 1996 Dr Desmond Morris's book Cat World was published. Okay, that is 16 years ago and the stresses on tiger conservation since then have mounted because the four reasons for the fall in tiger populations listed below are still present and getting worse. Bengal tiger cooling off in water. Photo: Pixabay. Tigers are great swimmers. In 1996 the human population of Asia had more than doubled since 1950 to 3,000 million. It will be double that in another 30 years. The 'living space for the tigers is vanishing year by year'. Yes, it is a simple matter of space. Tigers need lots of it: hundreds of square miles (male: up to 300 square kilometres). Secondly he writes that sport hunting still exists. I disagree with this because nowadays when tigers are shot they are not shot for the entertainment factor, they are shot dead for their body parts which are very valuable in Chinese medicine. Yes, there is still some illegal trophy hunting of the tiger but sport hunting is scarce ...

People are interested in the weight of tigers. They are the biggest cat on the planet after all. I have a page on the weight of all the wild cat species ranked in descending order which you can access by clicking here . I also have a page on the average weight of the tiger in pounds. It is a comprehensive page which you can access by clicking here . This page provides some insights. Bengal tiger size and weight. Image: PoC (MikeB). Mel and Fiona Sunquist in their excellent book Wild Cats of the World , published in 2002, make the point that it is difficult to find accurate information about the weights of tigers because the guys who hunted tigers didn't carry scales! They could measure the length of the tiger and the height to the shoulder, all that kind of stuff, but how were they going to weigh the animal? That presents a problem but we do have some data on this. They say that the heaviest Bengal tiger on record with a male that weighed 258.2 kg. They say that the weight is no...

Cool Cat is one of the very rare tiger cartoon characters. There certainly aren't many of them. Jeff Rovin in The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Cartoon Animals tells us that Cool Cat was a "Late entry into the Warner Brothers theatrical cartoon stable". Cool Cat a hip, bipedal Bengal tiger cartoon character. Image: MikeB from Wikipedia commons. He was a bipedal hep (hip) Bengal tiger. He wears a collar and necktie. He first appeared in Cool Cat in 1967 in which he is hunted by the "ineffectual Colonel Rimfire". The colonel travels through the jungle on a four-wheel drive robotic elephant named Ella! Col Rimfire tries again in Big Game Haunt in which he pursues the tiger into a haunted house were both of them were terrified by Spooky the ghost. Rimfire always comes out the loser in subsequent cartoons featuring a circus and a Grand Prix. Cool Cat also has adventures at college in Bugged by a Bee . In that cartoon he impresses the girls with his athletic prow...

This is a well asked question. And obviously Bengal tigers do attack humans sometimes when they come into conflict with humans because they've been forced into conflict by humans. The Sundarbans, a vast delta which straddles India and Bangladesh, is the place where Bengal tigers most often come into conflict with people and these are people who work in this delta. Essentially there are too many people to accommodate the space required by the Bengal tiger. They require vast ranges of many square miles. Big male Bengal tiger saunters across road ignoring the motorcyclist and passenger. Photo: Twitter. However, Jim Corbett who has a tiger reserve named after him and who was a big game hunter turned conservationist many years ago, said that tigers have quite a nice disposition. He should know because he shot lots of them and he was a renowned expert on tigers. What he is essentially saying is that tigers have quite a nice character and are not inherently aggressive except when they ne...

There are few measurements on how far tigers travel in a day or night but they spend a lot of their time searching for food and travel long distances in doing so. George Schaller in his work of 1967 called The Deer and the Tiger estimated the tiger's average walking speed and decided that tigers travelled 16 to 32 km per night in the Kanha National Park.  Tiger in Ranthambore NP, India. Photo in public domain. Soviet researchers followed tiger tracks in the snow and estimated that they normally travelled between 15 to 20 km per day ( The Amur Tiger in the USSR 1980). Others have reported that Siberian tigers in eastern Siberia travelled between 50 to 60 km per day under unusual circumstances.  In Chitwan National Park, a park where tiger prey is or was abundant, tigresses travelled roughly 7 to 10 km per night at a speed of about 0.7 km/h. Male tigers tend to go further than females and it is reported that one adult male in Chitwan travelled the length of his territory us...

We know that Bengal tigers are killed by poachers for the Chinese traditional medicine market. What route do the carcasses take to get to China from India or the other countries adjacent to India where the Bengal tiger remains (just)? Well, some carcasses have been seized in Bangkok, Thailand and the smugglers interviewed. They say that the Bengal tiger was being smuggled from Malaysia to Thailand, a hub for trade in wildlife. As Malaysia is south of Thailand it must be the case that the carcasses were shipped from India across the Indian Ocean to Malaysia and then by road to Thailand and then by road to Laos or Burma before entering southern China. That's it. Thailand is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). And so is China. Ha, ha. It's a joke, isn't it? CITES is a complete failure, pretty well. CITES in relation to cats . Thai people are mainly Buddhists. They are meant to treat animals nicely. So-called “tiger bone gl...