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Amur (or Siberian) tiger
photo: WWF-Canon /
KLEIN & HUBERT |
Physical Characteristics
The largest of all cats, the tiger is one of the biggest and most fearsome predators in the world. Weighing up to 500 pounds and measuring more than nine feet from nose to the tip of the tail, tigers can travel long distances and bound up to 30 feet in one leap.
Tigers are distinctively camouflaged with their gold coloring and black stripes. Their fierce retractile claws and powerful bodies put tigers at the top of the food chain - they eat just about anything and nothing eats them.
Diet
Tigers prefer to eat ungulates, or hoofed animals (such as wild deer and wild pigs), but have been known to eat fish, birds, and even other predators like leopards and bears. Tigers are able to eat up to 80 pounds of meat in one sitting. Hunting, however, can be difficult for tigers - they are successful in only one or two attacks out of every 20.
Habitat
Tigers are solitary animals and usually come together only to mate. Occasionally, however, small groups of related adults may associate. Mating can occur at any time and typically produces litters with two or three cubs. Cubs stay with their mother for about two years, as early life is dangerous. One half of all cubs born don't survive to their third year.
Living fairly secretive lives, the remaining tigers can be found across the continent of Asia in variety of environments including forests, grasslands and swamps. Tigers seem to thrive in areas of dense vegetation with numerous sources of water and large populations of ungulate prey.
Threats and Status
The tiger population is thought to have fallen by about 95 percent since the beginning of the 20th century. These remaining tigers are threatened by many factors, including growing human populations, loss of habitat, illegal hunting (of both tigers and their prey species), and expanded trade in tiger parts used as traditional medicines for treatment of conditions such as arthritis and rheumatism.
Only 5,000 to 7,000 individual tigers remain in the wild. Although it is one the most magnificent and revered animals, the tiger is listed as "endangered" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and is also listed on CITES Appendix I, which makes trading of live cats or cat parts (i.e., fur, bones and meat) illegal in signatory countries.
Read population estimates for remaining tigers.
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