Tiger

The tiger is the biggest cat that has ever prowled the planet, and one of the most recognisable animals alive. It is also one of the most endangered — the entire wild population would fit into a large sports stadium.

Overview

Tigers are built around one strategy: get close, then explode. They are ambush predators of dense cover — tropical rainforest, pine and birch forest, tall grassland, and coastal mangrove swamp. Six subspecies survive, from the compact Sumatran tiger of Indonesian rainforest to the massive Siberian (Amur) tiger of the snowy Russian Far East. A seventh, the South China tiger, has not been seen in the wild for decades.

Physical characteristics

A large male Siberian tiger can weigh 300 kg — twice a lion — with forelimbs powerful enough to drag a carcass heavier than itself. The orange coat with black stripes looks bold in a zoo but works as camouflage in the broken light of forest and grass, where deer see colour poorly. Every stripe pattern is unique to the individual and is printed on the skin, not just the fur.

Tigers have large, forward-facing eyes for judging distance, a night vision roughly six times better than a human’s, and retractable claws up to 10 cm long.

Habitat and range

Tigers once ranged from Turkey to the Russian coast and south through most of Asia. Today they occupy a fragmented 7% of that range, in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, parts of Southeast Asia, and a strip of the Russian Far East. India holds well over half of all wild tigers. What every population needs is the same: dense cover, a large prey base, water, and freedom from people with snares.

Diet and hunting

Tigers are pure carnivores that target large hoofed mammals — sambar and chital deer, wild boar, gaur, and young buffalo. A tiger stalks to within 10–20 metres, then rushes and knocks the prey down, killing large animals with a throat bite that suffocates them and small animals with a bite to the back of the neck.

Hunts usually fail; a tiger may make a kill only once or twice a week and can eat up to 40 kg of meat in a sitting before resting for days. Where wild prey has been hunted out, tigers turn to livestock, which brings them into deadly conflict with herders.

Behaviour and territory

Adult tigers are solitary and territorial. A male’s range overlaps those of several females and is defended against other males; boundaries are advertised with scent spray, scratch marks, and roars that carry up to 3 km. Tigers are mostly active at dusk, night, and dawn, and rest through the heat of the day.

They communicate with a wide vocabulary — roars, moans, hisses, and a friendly puffing sound called a prusten, made between mothers and cubs or courting adults.

Reproduction and life cycle

There is no fixed breeding season. After a pregnancy of about 103 days, a female gives birth to two to four blind, helpless cubs in a sheltered den. She raises them alone. Cubs start following her to kills at around two months, begin hunting attempts near their first birthday, and become independent at 18 months to two years.

Cub mortality is high — floods, fire, starvation, and infanticide by incoming males all take a toll, and typically only about half survive to leave their mother.

Threats and conservation

The tiger is listed as Endangered, with a decreasing global trend, though the picture varies sharply by country:

• Habitat loss and fragmentation. Logging, plantations, roads, and settlement have carved tiger forest into islands too small to hold viable populations.
• Poaching. Tigers are killed for skins and for bones, teeth, and other parts used in traditional medicine, driven by organised wildlife trafficking.
• Prey depletion. “Empty forest syndrome” — intact-looking habitat with no deer or pigs left to hunt.

There is real hope in the numbers. Tiger range countries pledged in 2010 to double wild tigers, and India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Russia have since reported rising populations thanks to better-funded, better-armed protection and the recovery of prey.