The Tiger

Vietnam's tiger conservation efforts has arrived too late with just 5 wild tigers in the country! The video explains why Vietnamese people should think about tiger conservation and refuse to buy tiger glue among other tiger products. Tigers were plentiful in Vietnam. Now there are five in the wild. That's almost as good as saying they are extinct in the wild in Vietnam. The video is good. I like it. But it's too late and the Vietnamese are engaged in a particularly obnoxious kind of speciesism concerning one species: the cat. Their culture allows them to eat domestic cats after a brutal death and yet there is a big push to save the tiger. As I said this is speciesism and it is illogical to me. It is remarkable that so many products are made from tiger body parts many based on unsubstantiated superstition. Killing tigers for body part products is killing them for no reason at all. It is just self-indulgent nonsense. Education for Nature - Vietnam says that the remaining five...

A swath of officials in the Indian city of Raipur, Chhattisgarh have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in the illegal tiger trade and there appears to be evidence that villagers have been eating tiger body parts.  Bengal tiger for illustration purposes only. Photo in public domain. Eating tiger body parts almost exclusively occurs in the Far East of Asia e.g. in Vietnam, China and Laos. This is the first time to my knowledge that Indians in India have been involved in this conservation-busting practice. It must have happened before, however. Two assistant sub-inspectors of police, five constables, three health department officials and a school headmaster are among those arrested for being involved in the illegal trade of a tiger hide. They caught them through a decoy operation on March 12th. It is reported that two local residents have confessed to the police that they killed the tiger accidentally. They wanted to trap wild pigs in the Bacheli forest range. A tiger wa...

Bottle of tiger bone wine. Photo: PoC. Hundreds of different, almost always, medicinal uses are made of various parts of the tiger's body. Here are some examples. The fat is thought to be a tonic for rheumatism; The fat is prized as an aphrodisiac; The flesh gives courage and strength to those who eat it; The floating collarbone or clavicle is believed to be a powerful charm against evil; The heart is eaten to give strength, courage and cunning; The brain is mixed with oil and rubbed on the body to cure laziness and acne; The penis is meant to be a sexual tonic; The skin is valued as a trophy and can be worn as clothing as a symbol of wealth; The bones are a treatment of ulcers, malaria, typhoid, dysentery, burns, arthritis and rheumatism; The bones are also a treatment for impotence and a lowered libido; The humerus bone i.e. the upper front leg bone has the most potent of all healing powers. The bones are ground down to a powder. Then, used in pills, plasters and as a part of rem...

Even today in Asia tiger body parts are still extensively used by people to improve their well-being or status, or so they believe. The Chinese are particularly involved with this. The body parts are also often used in Chinese traditional medicine. However, you can go back a very long way indeed throughout history to see how humankind's reverence and admiration of the tiger has often been its demise. It is very odd that animals that people admire end up being killed by people because humankind likes to possess or eat a piece of that animal thinking that it benefits them. Tiger clavicle bone as a brooch. Photo: Tennants Auctioneers. For example, the tiger clavicle bone was often turned into a brooch. You can see one in the photograph above. This particular brooch is mounted in gold metal with a pin fastener. It is 7.5 cm long. A very small bone for such a very large predatory animal. This is because its reduced size allows the tiger to stride longer and therefore move faster....