14 DAY TRIAL // 1. Today we say the tiger is the king of the jungle but the tiger originated in the Pleistocene of Asia, about 2 million years ago, in a clime of temperate forests. This nocturnal and solitary cat has a territory varying in the case of the male from 60 square kilometers in tropical forests and savannas to 4,000 square km in prey-poorer Manchurian forest. Females have smaller territories: 30 to 500 square km, and the territory of a male comprises that of several females. Only the male defends his territory against other males.
When two tigers meet, they can emit grave meows, tremendous roarings and fearsome growls, while showing off their canines, but usually the weaker one cedes and rolls over his back, limbs up, as a sign of submission.
Tigers mark their territory by urinating, by scratching the bark of the trees and by roaring. The roar can be heard 8 km (5 mi) away. All the big cats of the Panthera genus can roar (unlike the small cats of the Felis genus) because their hyoid bone and hyoid apparatus is imperfectly ossified, allowing ample swellings of the larynx and a louder vocal volume. Unlike most other cats, tiger is a water loving, and like any cat they make their cleaning in the morning and evening.
2. Tigers hunt based mainly on vision and hearing. They have binocular vision (like humans do) and their night vision is five times sharper than ours. Usually, the tiger creeps within 10-23 m (30-80 ft) of its prey till launching the final attack. Nape bite kills smaller prey (the sharp canines are 7.5 cm (3 in) long), while larger prey is brought to the ground before being suffocated in the lion style. Missed prey can be chased for 650 ft (218 m), but rarely catches it in this case. A tiger attack is successful in just 10 % of the cases.
Their prey goes from deer, pigs, moose, tapir, cattle and antelopes to gharials, wild buffaloes, pythons, frogs, fish, birds, monkeys, rabbits, hares, small mammals, lizards, snakes, turtles, crabs, insects, and even lynxes, leopards and other tigers! Hunt usually is made during the night.
A tiger can eat 6-20 kg (exceptionally 50) kg of meat at once. A buffalo is devoured in 4-5 days. The prey is dragged to cover, usually near water. The remains are covered with branches when the tiger is full, and after sleeping, it will return to the carcass. If the meat rots, the tiger abandons the corpse, but it will attack the scavengers rushing prematurely to its kill.
A tiger's canine teeth are 7.5 cm (3 in) long.
Tiger's sole competitor predator is the dhole or Asian wild dog. If food is scarce, tiger can wander hundreds of kilometers. Tigers pass 80 % of the time resting.
3. Tigers mate in April-May and October-November in India, November-February in Indochina and Sumatra, in Siberia all year round. The fertile female signals this through urine and scratches on the tree bark. In Siberia, with such vast territories, the female may go searching a male. The female is receptive just 3-7 days.
The male mates for tens of time per day with the female, for 3-4 days, and bites her from the nape to stimulate her ovulation.
The female gives birth up to 16 cubs, weighing 1 kg (2.2 pounds) at birth, but usually in a litter 2-4, exceptionally 6, survive. They are born blind, and open their eyes at two weeks. The mother can carry them from one shelter to another by grabbing them by the nape. At three months, the cubs can leave the den and now they can start eating meat. They are weaned at 5-6 months, when they start accompanying their mothers to hunt. Cubs up to 15 moths can climb trees, after that they turn too heavy. At less than one year, the cubs can hunt on their own, but only at two years old they can kill large prey and they still stay with their mother till 3-5 years old, when they start to look for their own territories. Females are sexually mature at 3-4 years old, the males at 4-5. In the wild, tigers live 12-20 years, while in captivity up to 26 years.
4. Today just four tiger subspecies survive: Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) from India and neighboring areas, about 5,000 individuals; Indochinese tiger (P.t. Corbetti), less than 2,000; Sumatra tiger (P.t.sumatrae) 600-800 individuals; Siberian tiger (P.t.altaica) about 350 individuals, from northeastern China and neighboring Russia.
The South Chinese tiger (P.t. Amoyensis) is believed to be extinct, while other three subspecies are clearly gone: Caspian tiger (P.t.virgata), Bali tiger (P.t.balica) and Java tiger (P.t.sondaica).
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 100,000 tigers in Asia, 40,000 only in India. In 1973, there were fewer than 4,000. Today in India there are 18 tiger reservations, summing 28,000 square kilometers.
The threat of poaching is still persistent: in the Asian traditional medicine, a pouch of tiger bones can cost $ 500 and processed bones can value in the Extreme East up to $ 25,000.
The island races of tiger (Sumatra, Bali, Java) are/were smaller than mainland tigers, and those of warm and wet clime have a darker coat.
The Siberian tiger is the largest cat ever to exist. One wild individual had 2.8 m (without the tail) in length and weighed 384 kg (850 pounds) (almost twice the weight of a lion)! Average individuals of this race are 4 m (13 ft) long head-trunk-tail and weigh 320 kg (700 pounds), being still 1.5 times larger than a lion. Because it has to withstand winter temperatures of -40oC (while the Indian tigers have to withstand 45o C in the summer!), this subspecies grows a longer and thicker coat than other tigers, and also develops a layer of fat on its flanks and belly, helping in insulating it. Its paler coat with more white helps it camouflage in snowy environments.
The Bengal tiger is the size of a lion (the male is 3 m (10 ft) long and weighs 200 kg (450 pounds) while the female is 2.7 m long and 140 kg heavy); the Indochinese tiger is smaller, while the Sumatra tiger is the size of a well developed jaguar. The Java and Bali tigers were the size of a leopard.
5.The Sumatra tiger is known to be able to swim up to 30 km in the sea and can take 15 m length jumps. Tigers are known to swim ceaselessly 5 km and to love water, because being of northern origin, they can hardly stand the heat. Also, a tiger can drag a 170 kg wild boar for hundreds of meters.
6. If you meet a tiger in the wild, do not look it directly into the eyes. This is defiance in the tiger behavior and it will likely attack.
Do tigers eat people? Not all the tigers are man-eaters. Usually, when a tiger detects a human presence it stealthily runs away. The human smell does not seem to attract their interest.
But a hungry tiger can become dangerous. Older tigers that lost teeth or are wounded by humans can lose their hunting ability. In cases when humans invade their territories, tigers' natural prey becomes scarce. That's why in India 50 persons are killed by the tigers annually. Ten times more persons are killed by venomous snakes each year there. Tigers are especially dangerous in Sundarbans (the Ganges Delta).
7. The white tigers can be seen in some regions of India and are the result of a mutant recessive gene. This means that both the male and the female must carry the gene (even if they are normally colored) to produce white cubs. These tigers are not albino; they have black stripes and blue eyes while albino tigers are completely white and have red eyes.
