Tigers are the largest members of the cat family (Felidae). The other big cat members of this family are lions, panthers and jaguars. These large, predatory felines are known for their iconic orange fur and black stripes. Fur colors do range across the subspecies though, with Sumatran tigers are typically sporting the darkest coats, and Bengal tigers sometimes sporting white coats thanks to a recessive gene. Stripes can vary in color and spacing across the subspecies as well. The largest tiger subspecies are the Amur (Siberian) tigers — males can weigh up to 660 pounds (300 kilograms) and females up to 370 pounds (167 kg) — and the smallest are the Sumatran tigers, with males weighing up to 260 pounds (120 kg) and females weighing up to 200 pounds (90 kg).
Tigers live long whether you find them in the wild or in the confines of a zoo. Their longevity reaches 26 years, which should have been enough time to breed well. It is not only their size that is large but also its appetite for territory. Though tigers usually prefer living and hunting alone, they are also very social animals that need large areas in which to live and hunt. Unfortunately for tigers, developments favoring us humans have destroyed their habitats. This is food for thought to us all who want to do something to help revive the tiger population. Tigers used to be abundant in Asian countries, including Turkey and Russia.
However, the past century has seen the tigers lose almost a hundred percent of the place they used to inhabit. Today, the tiger habitats are living in grasslands, the Siberian tanga and even in the mangrove swamps of the tropics. On writing, it sounds as if there is still a generous patch of land available. There aren’t a lot of tigers left in general, though. With only six subspecies left, tigers have been declared endangered by the IUCN. Tigers that remained in the forests are only a little more than 3,000 in number.
The rest of the tigers, which may have not been included in the count, belong to small, isolated groups that sort of act like family units. The population has suffered a rapid decline due to the destruction of the tigers' homes as well as because of the crime of poaching. So, at this point, the area left inhabited by tigers is at only 184,911 square kilometers or 457,497 square miles. This estimate, however, was good in the 1990s. Today, the area could be a lot smaller.Back in 1758, Linnaeus gave the tiger "Felis tigrisas" as its scientific name in his Systema Naturae. However, in 1929, Reginald Innes Pocock, a British taxonomist has declared the animal part of the genus Panthera.
At that time, the tiger has instead become tagged with the scientific name Panthera tigris. Note that Panthera as a word could be Oriental in origin and may even be traced back to various ancient words such as pantera (Latin), pantere (French) and panther, which is Ancient Greek. The word, in the olden days, would most likely refer to a “yellowish animal”, which the tiger is.
Tiger - Wikipedia
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