The Tiger

In conjunction with our upcoming posters about big cats to be put up at the Rangers' Station, Animal Spotlight presents to you this largest member of the cat family. 

Scientific Name: Panthera tigris

Range: The Old World from the Indian subcontinent across to China down the Malayan Peninsula to Indonesia, Borneo and the islands of Southeast Asia.

Habitat: From wet tropical rainforests to mangrove swamps to snow-covered taiga, mountain forests up to 8,000 ft.

Diet: Deer, monkeys, wild boar, wild cattle and sometimes livestock.

Social structure: Solitary or mother with young.

Life Span: 10 - 15 years

How  and when do Tigers hunt?

Tigers hunt by stalking, meaning they must get as close to their prey as possible before bursting out of cover and pouncing on them. Tigers hunt about once a week, usually at dawn or dusk, sometimes in the day. A tiger can eat up to 25kg of meat in one sitting, storing the remainder in the bushes for later.

Tigers in the bath tub!

Tigers love water and they are seldom far from rivers and streams. On hot days, they will cool off up to their necks in water (heard that they don’t like to get their faces wet). Strong swimmers, they have been seen swimming across wide rivers and even to offshore islands. They also charge into water to drown large deer and kill crocodiles......Cool !

Threats to Tigers

Poaching is a major threat. Besides their skins, tigers' body parts and bones are highly sought after for traditional Chinese medicine. Almost every part of the tiger has some medicinal value and consuming tiger parts has become a status symbol among Asians......Urgh !

Habitat destruction reduces prey, fragments tiger populations and increases tiger-human contact, resulting in tigers being hunted to protect livestock......Unfair !

Tigers are also hunted as man-eaters. Tigers may develop a taste for humans after accidentally meeting and killing a human, or after eating unburied corpses. The most notorious man-eaters are the 500 or so tigers in the Sudarbans Reserve, a mangrove forest in India. Each year, tigers kill about 50 people who enter the reserve to fish or collect wood; totaling 800 people over the last 20 years. But only 3% of the kills were eaten, suggesting that the tigers killed humans as competitors and not as prey. Because tigers usually attacked from behind, conservationists got people to wear a mask of a human face with big eyes on the back of their heads. This eliminated tiger attacks for a few years, but tigers recently appear to have learnt to ignore the mask......Silly cats, now then they realise !

Current status of Tigers in the wild

Highly threatened. In the early 1900s, an estimated 100,000 wild tigers roamed the wilderness of Asia. 100 years later today, only about 7% (7,000) of that population remain in the wild and extinction is possible by the year 2010 if current threats persist......Darn !!

Note - Night Safari has one of the most successful captive breeding program for the Malayan tigers. According to the NS tram presenters' script, more than 20 of such Malayan tigers were born and raised in NS since 1994. Many surplus tigers have been sent to overseas zoos and wildlife institutions as part of an international tiger breeding program.

Conservation Measures

An AZA Species Survival Plan currently covers the Siberian, Sumatran and Indochinese tigers (the South China Tiger and Bengal Tigers are not covered by this Plan. The Indian Zoo Association manages the Bengal Tiger population). The Plan aims to breed pure specimens of the subspecies and phase out the hybrids. Education and in-situ conservation and field studies are also part of the Plan. The Siberian captive tigers' population is now stable although only 75% of attempted pairings succeeded and 50% of offspring died before they could breed......Such a pity !

How many types of tigers are there?

Lets' find out!