The Tiger

Mabel Stark, a former Kentucky nurse became the world's first female tiger trainer. She spent almost 3 decades as a circus performer working with tigers and another 30 years working at Jungleland, an animal theme park in California where she raised cubs to be performers. All of her career took place in America. Mabel Stark with a leopard cub. Image: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. (Library of Congress) On April 20, 1968, Stark took own life at the age of 79. It was about a year or so after the Jungleland general manager dismissed her because the park's insurance provider decided that they could no longer cover her. At that moment, Mabel Stark told a cage hand at the park: ""If ever I can't have my tigers, it's sayonara, my friend." It seems that she meant it and decided to check out. She was born in Princeton, USA on December 10, 1889. Her real name was Mary Haynie. She was one of seven children and was raised on a farm. Her parents die...

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 did the first tigers walk the earth? It is a big question and one we have difficulty answering. It remains an evolving topic of discussion. In 2011 it was reported that the oldest extinct species of tiger had been discovered in China. The fossil was dated as being more than 2 million years old (2.16-2.55 million years). This predated earlier findings by 0.5 million years. Depiction of an ancient tiger perhaps one of the world's first. Image: Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski et al, PLoS ONE This ancient tiger, perhaps one of the first to walk the earth, was smaller than today's and was the size of a modern day jaguar, and therefore considerably smaller. They named the species: Panthera zdanskyi after the Austrian palaeontologist Otto Zdansky, now deceased. The fossil was uncovered in 2004 at Gansu in China. Judging by the shape of the skull, they decided that it was a male. It is similar to modern tigers'. And they believe the diet would have been similar too: main...

The exact date of the foundation of the royal menagerie appears to be uncertain. My source tells me that around 1120 King Henry I established a 'flourishing menagerie near Oxford which included the first recorded captive tiger in England'. Royal menagerie in 1816. Picture in the public domain. Another source tells me that the menagerie was founded at the Tower of London during the reign of King John (1199-1216). I favour the first date!  On that basis, the menagerie was moved to the Tower of London about 100 years after it was established.  The animals were gifts from other royalty. Various other tigers were presented to the Crown by rulers such as Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor. The zoo was closed to the public until the middle of the eighteenth century (around 1750). Until then royalty and guests were allowed to see the animals which were rare and exotic to the English of that era. Knowledge of managing captive animals was relative poor and it is said that many died...

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...