Tiger

Appearance

The snout ends in a triangular, pink tip with small black dots, the number of that increase with age. It has a powerful, muscular body with a large head and paws, a long tail and orange fur that fades to white in parts, with black, mostly vertical stripes. Major threats to tigers are habitat destruction and fragmentation due to deforestation, poaching for fur and the illegal trade of body parts for medicinal purposes.

Male Bengal tigers weigh 200–260 kg (440–570 lb), and females weigh 100–160 kg (220–350 lb). Island tigers are the smallest, likely due to insular dwarfism.

The Tiger has a typical felid morphology, with a muscular body, shortened legs, strong forelimbs with wide front paws, a large head and a tail that is about half the length of the rest of its body. It has five digits, among them a dewclaw, on the front feet and four on the back, all of that have retractile claws that are compact and curved, and can reach 10 cm (3.9 in) long.

Published measurements include mass about 180.

Range and habitat

The Tiger historically ranged from eastern Turkey, northern Iran and Afghanistan to Central Asia and from northern Pakistan through the Indian subcontinent and Indochina to southeastern Siberia, Sumatra, Java and Bali. As of 2022, it inhabits less than 7% of its historical distribution and has a scattered range in the Indian subcontinent, the Indochinese Peninsula, Sumatra, northeastern China and the Russian Far East. As of 2020, India had the largest extent of global Tiger habitat with 300,508 km2 (116,027 sq mi), followed by Russia with 195,819 km2 (75,606 sq mi).

It is traditionally classified into nine subspecies, though some recognise only two subspecies, the mainland Asian Tiger and the Sunda Islands Tiger. Since the early 20th century, Tiger populations have lost at least 93% of their historic range and are locally extinct in West and Central Asia, in large areas of China and on the islands of Java and Bali.

Habitat labels include forest.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

In northeastern China, tigers were crepuscular and active at night with activity peaking at dawn and dusk. They were largely active at the same time as their prey. In general, it is less capable of climbing trees than many other cats due to its size, but cubs under 16 months old may routinely do so.

An adult was recorded climbing 10 m (33 ft) up a smooth pipal tree. Abundance and body weight of prey species are assumed to be the main criteria for the Tiger's prey selection, both inside and outside protected areas. During courtship, the male is cautious with the female until she shows readiness to mate by positioning herself in lordosis with her tail to the side.

In crisis

It is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, as its range is thought to have declined by 53% to 68% since the late 1990s. Camera trapping during 2010–2015 in the deciduous and subtropical pine forest of Jim Corbett National Park, northern India revealed a stable Tiger population density of 12–17 individuals per 100 km2 (39 sq mi) in an area of 521 km2 (201 sq mi). In northern Myanmar, the population density in a sampled area of roughly 3,250 km2 (1,250 sq mi) in a mosaic of tropical broadleaf forest and grassland was estimated to be 0.21–0.44 tigers per 100 km2 (39 sq mi) as of 2009.

Population density in mixed deciduous and semi-evergreen forests of Thailand's Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary was estimated at 2.01 tigers per 100 km2 (39 sq mi). During the 1970s and 1980s, logging and poaching had occurred in the adjacent Mae Wong and Khlong Lan National Parks, where population density was much lower, estimated at only 0.359 tigers per 100 km2 (39 sq mi) as of 2016. Population density in dipterocarp and montane forests in northern Malaysia was estimated at 1.47–2.43 adult tigers per 100 km2 (39 sq mi) in Royal Belum State Park, but 0.3–0.92 adult tigers per 100 km2 (39 sq mi) in the unprotected selectively logged Temengor Forest Reserve.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Tiger is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Tiger, Wikidata item Q19939. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.