The Tiger

Siberian tiger caught in a camera trap in the far north of China. This is a Google Map showing the location where this Siberian tiger was captured by a remote camera trap device. These cameras are left alone and activated by movement. The name of the location as reported in online news media is confusing as there appears to be different versions of the same name of the names are wrong. For sure, though, this large tiger was spotted in a mountain range called 'Greater Hinggan Mountains' in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Xiao Hinggan Ling as shown in the map is an individual mountain as I understand it. In any event the location is in the extreme north-east of China and a place where the experts believed that the tiger was extinct. They've been proved wrong. As is the case with all tiger populations, there has been a massive diminishing of numbers since the turn of the 20th century. Some subspecies of tiger have become extinct in the wild.  The Siberian tiger is...

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...

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 ...

This is a hypothetical or theoretical question. Certainly, yes, Siberian tigers could easily survive in Alaska in terms of the seasonal temperatures. Alaska appears to be warmer on average than Siberia and Siberian tigers live in Siberia! It is just a question of whether there is sufficient prey animals in Alaska. And I think the second point is the one which would make it difficult for a Siberian tiger to survive in Alaska. And whether they'd be left alone and not persecuted or hounded as tourist attractions by humans. Siberian tiger. Image: Britannica. Around three quarters of Alaska is described as sub-Artic and therefore it lacks the habitat and prey animals required to sustain a Siberian tiger. If that is true, then the remaining quarter is acceptable in terms of supporting Siberian tigers and I'm sure that a quarter of Alaska is still a very large area! One person who commented on this topic said that Siberian tigers have an enormous area in which to live i.e. Siberia, bu...

This one is an easy question to answer. It is to do with evolution. So, you have to believe in Darwin's theory of evolution to believe the answer. Siberian tigers live in colder climates than Bengal and Sumatran tigers. They live in the far north, in fact, the far east of Russia near Vladivostok. They live in the snow and birch tree forests.  Siberian tiger. Image: MikeB They need to be able to protect themselves against the extreme cold which is why through natural selection they have evolved to be bigger because this gives them a smaller surface area-to-volume ratio which helps to reduce heat loss from the body of the animal. As more body heat is conserved, they are warmer which helps them to survive. Evolution is an act of survival. It is known as Bergmann's Rule. So, animals living in the North of the planet where temperatures are considerably lower will generally be larger. Conversely, animals living near the equator will be smaller and this applies to the Sumatran tiger w...

Female Siberian tigers in Sikhote-Alin are estimated to have a range of 200-400 km². Male Siberian tigers have a range size between 800-1000 km². These range sizes have been estimated based on radio tracking data. The range of each male tiger overlaps with 1-3 females "but male ranges overlap almost completely". However, males do not use the same area at the same time. Between females, there appear to be no overlaps or little overlap between the ranges of neighbouring adult females. Siberian tiger in the snow with cub. Photo: Pixabay. The range sizes of Siberian tigers are considerably larger than those of the Bengal tiger. The differences are due at least in part to differences in prey density and because the prey is migratory in Siberia. Male and female tigers communicate through a combination of scent marks, visual signals and vocalisations. In the area mentioned, in Siberia, Sikhote-Alin, Siberian tigers live in a mixed coniferous and broad-leaved deciduous forest. The la...

The Siberian tiger is also called the Amur tiger. There is an interesting article on the China Daily website about a forest ranger, An Jianwu, who works in the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces. Interestingly, Google Maps does not identify this huge park very well or at all.  Siberian tiger. Image in public domain. Photo above : In April 2021 this Siberian Tiger was spotted in China in the far north east of that country where it was eventually tranquilized with darts and is DNA analysed and the stripes also analysed to check whether it had wandered over from Russia. It weighed 200 kg and it was a male. People were astonished to see it wander down a village. It is up in the north of China and it appears to cross into Russia. A study describes the park as an area of "cross-border, cross-province, cross-region and cross-ownership. Its stakeholders are diversified.". There's been enhanced conservation of the Siberian tiger in...

The video and still photograph from the video show an Amur tigress (Siberian tigress) walking through deep snow in the Far East of Russia. She has become a mother for the third time. The video was captured by a camera trap. Below the video is the text accompanying the video in English translated from the Russian. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Центр «Амурский тигр» (@amurtigercenter) Note : This is a video from another website which is embedded here. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it. These words accompany the above video on Instagram:  Tigress Svetlaya became a mother for the third time. Having shown two 4-5 months old tiger cubs to a trail camera, Svetlaya, one of the "founding mothers" of the tiger population in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast made a New Year present to specialists of the Amur Tiger Center, the Tiger Center and the Hun...

The Siberian tiger population, a.k.a. Amur tigers, are already critically endangered because of their low population numbers at about 500. Conservationists are engaged in a rearguard action to save them and a recent attempt at artificial insemination at a zoo tragically killed the tiger . I now read that they are at risk of being killed by canine distemper (Scientific American online).  Siberian tigers are contracting canine distemper. Photo: Jeannette Rudloff Zonar GmbH and Alamy Stock Photo. The experts discovered this disease in Siberian tigers in 2003 when a young tiger wandered into a Russian village on the Chinese border. The scientists determined that she suffered from canine distemper. She died not long after her discovery.  I had thought that canine distemper was not zoonotic and therefore it could not be transmitted from dogs to cats. We are not told how the tigers are getting this disease (but see below). Let's just say that Siberian tigers are suffering from dis...

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...