The Tiger

There was a time when tigers were considered pests. The time was towards the middle of the eighteenth century. That's the middle of the 1700s for the sake of clarity. The fact of the matter is that many people today still consider the tiger to be a pest.  Tigers can still get in the way of day-to-day human life (the conflict in the Sundarbans region in Bangladesh being an example). Perhaps this is one reason why, despite an apparent concerted effort to protect the tiger, their numbers are still slowly declining and are precariously low (around 3.5k worldwide in the wild). Tiger hunting during the British Raj in India. Photo in the publis domain. A man called J. Forsyth wrote about the 'obstacle presented by the number of these animals [he was referring to tigers] to the advance of population and tillage'. It is old fashioned language meaning that tigers stopped the human population growing and stopped people working. His words were published in 1872 in his work The Highl...

When you use Google to search for the answer to the question, "Who shot the most tigers?" you are presented with the answer to a question about which tiger killed the most people. So much for Google search. I have told Google about this error. Picture in the public domain. My reference book, Wild Cats Of The World , might not tell me who shot the most tigers but it does tell me who shot a hell of a lot of tigers and it may be the answer I am seeking. There was a time when tigers were regarded as pests in India. I am referring to the Bengal tiger because that is the species of tiger which resides in India. And when they became pests because they interfered with people and the commercialisation of the landscape in India they were open to being shot as a popular pastime with army officers. Don't forget this was the time of the British Raj, the British Empire, which is in fact back in the news today because a lot of people consider the British Empire as a bad project where...

I have said that the South China tiger subspecies ( Panthera tigris amoyensis ) is totally extinct - captive or wild . That may be a rash statement but it is based on sensible thought and real information. As at 2002, on the publication of the Sunquist's renown Wild Cats Of The World , of the five-remaining subspecies of the tiger (I say it's four now) the South China tiger was the most endangered. Tiger farm - Photo by International Tiger Coalition The decline in population was rapid at the end. In 1949 it was thought that there were 4,000 individuals. However, this fantastic animal was "declared a pest" and mercilessly persecuted. I can understand one aspect of this. The tiger is hard to live with because it is a very large and a potentially dangerous animal. Humankind has great difficulty sharing the planet with it. But the main reason for its decline is Chinese medicine. Please note that I am not being judgemental. I am simply describing what has gone o...

Why did the Caspian tiger become extinct? Uhmm, we really only have to look at what is going on today. But how, specifically, did we lose the Caspian tiger? The Caspian tiger did not populate the area densely but in and around water courses and where there was water. The range of the Caspian tiger was approximately that of its prime prey the cervids, examples of which are red and roe deer and the wild boar. Caspian tiger. Photo: Wikipedia. He looks overweight due to his captivity. He looks very heavy. The DNA of the Caspian tiger is very close to that of the Siberian tiger apparently. The beginning of the end for this tiger was the occupation of the region by Russians. The Russians cultivated the reedbeds to agricultural land (growing cotton), thereby despoiling the tiger's habitat and hunted the tiger and its prey, the wild boar, that helped to support the tiger. Colonisation of the area was facilitated by the river systems. The tiger was then made vulnerable to the activities o...

The tiger has extraordinary athleticism and courage. Here is a verbatim account from a tiger hunt that took place in and around the 1850s. In those days shooting at tigers was commonplace. It makes me admire the tiger hugely but detest the human in equal measure. "Lieutenant Rice relates an anecdote of an extraordinary leap made by a tigress. He happened to be near the city Bhampoora, and was preparing to examine a large ravine in the vicinity, when word was brought back that a tigress had been seen creeping out of a thick patch of cover that had already been beaten. The beast had cunningly remained hidden in spite of the noise made by the men; and, thinking the danger was over, was attempting to sneak off unobserved to some distant jungle, when she was espied by a man who had been stationed near the spot as a look-out. Lieutenant Rice and his companion took up their position on the slope of a hill, and sent the sent the beaters round the opposite side for the purpose of driving...