Tiger Butterfly | Tiger Shark | Tiger Moth
Tiger Salamander | Tasmanian Tiger | Tiger Bamboo

Tiger Butterfly

Tiger butterflies have distinct yellow and black striped markings on their wings and body. They are relatively common butterflies that are strong fliers with an average wingspan of 9.0-16.5 cm. Some females may be darker, especially in the south.

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Tiger Shark

The dark markings across its back resemble that of the tiger’s and hence its name. Ranging between 10 to 20 feet in length, the tiger shark has a keen eyesight and well-developed sense of smell. These solitary sharks are distributed in warm tropical seas throughout the world. The tiger shark usually hunts alone and is considered a deadly predator. It has powerful jaws and serrated teeth that slice through prey.

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Tiger Moth

Tiger moths have hairy bodies and the pale yellow or cream-coloured with dark gold and black stripes. They are heavy, slow night fliers. Tiger moths may have one to several generations per year, depending on the species and latitude. At rest, their wings are folded like a roof over their bodies.

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Tiger Salamander

The tiger salamander is a large amphibian with huge blotches over its body. The spots vary with the different sub-species. The yellow and black blotches may merge to form a stripey pattern. The stripes are not limited to its back, but extend down its sides, legs and tail. Tiger salamanders have a lifespan of about 20 years! They live in deep pools and feed on earthworms, insects or molluscs.

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Tasmanian Tiger

The Tasmanian tiger-wolf was a marsupial carnivore, now believed to be extinct. It Tasmanian tiger is about 1.5 m. long, and has light brown fur with dark tiger-like stripes across its lower back. The jaws of the Tasmanian tiger are believed to open wider than any other mammal. It had a stiff, heavy tail and though called ‘tiger’, it was a shy, secretive animal, hunted to extinction for preying on sheep.

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Tiger Bamboo

The tiger bamboo Bambusa vulgaris found in the tropics is a golden colour with green stripes. Some varieties are uniquely black in colour. The tender shoot of the tiger bamboo is edible and considered a delicacy.

Mating

The female tiger is ready to start a family when she is three years old. Males are ready at four years. The smell of her spray markings attracts the male and she also roars loudly. In some cases, the tigress may have to call out for many days before the male joins her.

Usually solitary creatures, this is the only time a full grown male spends time in the company of another tiger.

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Parenting

In about 90-100 days, the tiger cubs are born. The tigress is quite slim during this period and her belly becomes big only just before she gives birth.

The mother looks for a thickly vegetated area or any other secure hiding place such as a den for her cubs. Two, three or four small, blind cubs are born. They are completely helpless and have to be protected from all kinds of predators such as eagles and jackals. At the slightest indication of danger, the tigress picks up her cubs with her mouth and moves them one by one to a safer spot. The place also needs to be near a waterhole so that the tigress will be able to hunt more easily and be able to feed them properly.

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Tiger Cubs

The tiny cubs weigh about 0.9 to 1.5 kg. and measure between 22 to 29 cm. in length. The mother licks the young ones immediately after birth to stimulate and assist blood flow. As they grow, the mother spends a lot of time licking, cleaning and cuddling her cubs. For the first month, the cubs remain in their den. After that, they may go out sometimes, but they always stay very close to their mother.

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Growing Up

For about two months, they only drink their mother’s milk. After that, they eat small pieces of meat. The only time tigers are known to live in a group is for two or three years from birth, when they’re busy learning the facts of life from their mother.

When the cubs are three or four months old, the mother takes them out on their first visit to the forest.

By the time the cubs are six months old, they grow very fast and need to eat a lot. They travel more at this age, and over longer distances, but they still need their mother to help them learn about the sights and sounds around them.

When the cubs are almost a year old, they begin to help their mother when she hunts. They do this by causing confusion or by distracting the prey. Sometimes they try and hunt small animals like peacocks themselves. For the first few years, young tigers fail almost every time they try and attack an animal.

Tiger cubs spend a lot of time playing and jumping around. They also have a lot of play fights with their brothers and sisters. This helps them test their strength as they grow.

As the cubs grow bigger and stronger, the mother begins to spend more and more time away from her family.

By the time they are about two years old, the mother teaches them everything that they need to know. They are then ready to leave their family and start their own grown-up life.

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Like all domestic cats, tigers have claws that are retractable (that can be slipped back into the skin). And like all cats, they are meat-eaters.

Solitary Beast | Aggression | Hunting Techniques | Tiger Appetite

Solitary Beast

Unlike the lion, the tiger prefers to live alone. Each tiger has its very own ‘territory’ or home area of which it is very protective. It doesn’t like other tigers entering its territory.

To mark the border of its territory, the tiger scratches on tree trunks with its claws. It also sprays the area with a mixture of ‘perfumes’ from its special scent glands and urine to scent-mark its territory. Any other tiger that strays into the area recognizes these signs, and knows that it is in someone else’s territory, so it is on its guard.

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Aggression

Tigers walk long distances. When one tiger smells the scent of another, it lowers its tongue and curls up its face. This is something like the face you would make if you smelt something bad and then got angry!

An ordinary day in a tiger’s life is generally quite peaceful. For most of the day, the tiger rests, sits around, sleeps and cleans itself. This is because the tiger has to save up all its strength for those few minutes when it has to hunt for its food. It roars loudly to warn other tigers.

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Hunting Techniques

Tigers need a lot of energy to catch their prey. They usually hunt late in the evening. Spotting a deer or a wild boar (its favourite meals), the tiger waits in the shadows of the tall grass as silent as a mouse until the moment is right. And then it suddenly springs upon its unwary prey. Extremely agile for short distances, the tiger can jump up to 30 feet. With fabulous night vision, powerful jaws, super claws, unbelievably strong forearms and the sharpest of sharp teeth, the tiger is a fantastic hunter.

Excellent camouflage combined with its excellent stalking techniques, enables the tiger to approach its prey within strike distance without being seen. Camouflage is a technique of using a particular characteristic to melt with the background so that you can hide from both predators and prey species, enabling the animal to attack without being seen. Many animals from small insects to deer use camouflage to hide. (Don’t you wish that you could camouflage yourself in the classroom so your teacher would never see you?)

As the most active hunting time of the tiger is between dusk and dawn, it greatly depends on its excellent night vision. The tiger can see and hear very well in the dark. This is why it can hunt for its food in the late evening when it is almost dark.

The hunting tactic generally entails killing prey species with a single bite - usually at the throat in the case of large animals, or at the back of the neck of smaller prey. Its teeth are well suited for holding prey and tearing off chunks of meat.

After a kill, the tiger drags the carcass (yet another example of the tiger’s incredible strength) to thick cover, preferably near water to protect it from vultures, scavengers or even other tigers.

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Tiger Appetite

Tigers are carnivores. They love eating meat! Large deer make up nearly three-quarters of a tiger’s diet. They also prey on wild pigs and cattle. As you may have noticed, all these are large-hoofed mammals. This is because a tiger needs nearly 3,000 kg. of meat a year. Sometimes a tiger might go for a young elephant or rhinoceros or decide to stick with tiny creatures like crabs, fish, lizards, crabs and small birds.

Tigers that live in Indian forests often try and attack the Indian porcupine, which are powerful animals, weighing as much as 18-20 kg. This is, more often than not, a bad idea! Tigers may suffer serious injuries or even death from the long spines that the porcupine drives into the face or lungs of any who tries to threaten it.

When it’s really hungry, tigers can eat anywhere between 18 to 32 kg. of meat at one time from a single carcass. Talk about a really huge appetite! Then it will not eat again for several days, sometimes even a whole week.

Did you know that the tiger only manages to catch its prey in one out of 10-20 tries? This is because while predators have claws, teeth and jaws for hunting, nature has also gifted the hunted prey with lightning speed, one of the many tactics in their bag for escape!

Prey species

Nilgai: The nilgai is herbivorous and feeds on grass, crops and fruits such as ber. It can manage without water for long periods.

Sambar: Sambar feed on grasses and are mostly nocturnal. Most deer feed on grasses that are rich in calcium.

Gaur: The largest of the world’s oxen, it can be nearly thrice the weight of an adult tiger, yet the experienced tiger has been known to prey on it successfully.

Mating behaviour

Chemical signals help male tigers to maintain a check on the receptivity of potential mates. Females indicate their periods of heat, and where they are located, by leaving scent markings. These signals are crucial to the social fabric of tigers.

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Roaming in shadowy monsoon forests, cool mangrove swamps and the cold, frosty forests of its few remaining homes, the tiger is celebrated as the striped king of beasts. The tiger can live in hot places like the bamboo jungles and rainforests of Malaysia and even in very cold places like snowy Siberia.

In India, tigers live in grasslands, dry forests, and evergreen hills. Unlike the lion, which likes open country, the tiger is a secretive animal and prefers lush forests and grasslands.

Thousands of years ago, eight different sub-species of tigers roamed all over Asia. They were named after the places in which they lived. But today three of these are extinct and only five species remain.

Bengal Tiger | Indo-Chinese Tiger
Siberian or Amur Tiger | Sumatran Tiger
South Chinese or Amoy Tiger | Extinct Tiger Species

Bengal tiger

The Indian or royal Bengal tiger Panthera tigris tigris is found in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and even parts of Myanmar. It is estimated that only about 3000 of these are alive today.

They live in the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans in West Bengal, grasslands, dense forests and even in the cold coniferous forests of the Himalayas.
A male Bengal tiger (from head to tail) is about 2.5 m. long and weighs between 180-230 kg. The female is usually just as long but is lighter, and weighs about 125-160 kg. Bengal tigers live 15 to 20 years in the wild.

These tigers mainly prey on sambar (deer), wild boar, antelopes and gaur. Females roam a territory of 10-40 sq. km and males a territory of 30-100 sq. km. The roar of the Bengal tiger can be heard even three kilometres away from it.

White tigers

White tigers are not a separate sub-species. They are regular tigers with the same face, tail and pugmarks, the only difference is that they are white in colour. They have blue eyes and pink noses. White tigers may have brown or black stripes though some have been seen without any stripes at all.

Almost all white tigers are descendants of a white tiger who was captured in a forest by the Maharaja of Rewa in 1951.

The colour of a tiger is determined by genetics. Each gene is made up of two alleles. Every tiger is given two alleles, one by its mom and one by its dad. Two alleles marking orange colour make an orange tiger. Only when a tiger has two alleles, which are white, does it get its white colour. A tiger with one white allele and one orange one is called a carrier and is coloured orange. That is why white tigers are not as common as orange ones.

If you have trouble understanding what alleles are, think of them as coloured cards. You play a game where every player gets two cards. There are, let’s say, only two colours in the entire deck - red and white. And let’s say there are a lot more red cards in the deck than white ones. If you get two red cards, you’re in the Red Queen’s kingdom. If you get two white cards (which is really, really rare), you get to be in the White Queen’s kingdom. But if you get one Red and one White, you’d be either Red (because Red ‘dominates’ over white) or Pink (if both of them are friendly and gel together.) It’s the same logic with ‘White Tigers’.

Could there be Black Tigers too?

Black tigers with brown, yellow or white stripes on black skin may also exist. In October 1992, such a skin was recovered from smugglers at Tis Hazari and even displayed at the National Museum of Natural History, New Delhi in February, 1993.

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Indo-Chinese tiger
The Indo-Chinese tiger Panthera tigris corbet is distributed across Thailand and is also found in south China, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and even parts of Malaysia. It lives in hilly or mountainous forests. These regions are often along the borders of countries and are therefore restricted areas. Scientists have only recently been given permission to study these tigers. There are only about 1,200 to 1,800 Indo-chinese tigers left in the wild.

The Indo-Chinese tigers are darker than the Bengal tiger but lighter than Sumatran tigers. They have short, black, narrow stripes. Their stomach, throat and cheeks have large white markings.

These tigers are one of the smaller sub-species. The male is between 2.6 to 2.9 m. long and it weighs 150-200 kg. The female is between 2.3 to 2.6 m. long and weighs from 60 to 130 kg.

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Siberian or Amur tiger

The Amur tiger Panthera tigris altaica is found in the coniferous, scrub, oak and birch woodlands of Russia. The Siberian tiger is the largest of all tiger species. Males can grow upto 3.5 m. and weigh around 100 to 150 kg. Females measure about 2.5 m. and weigh about 100-150 kg. Only about 400 of them left in the wild. Some tigers of this species are also found in southeast China.

They have thick white fur around their necks with white markings on their chests and bellies. The orange colouring is lighter than that of the other species. Their stripes are widely spaced and are more brown than black. Their fur is longer in order to survive the cold climate and snowy habitat that it lives in.

The Amur tiger usually preys on wild boar and elk. Due to its prey species being unevenly distributed, the amur moves about more territory than any other tiger species. Females roam a territory of 100-400 sq. km. and males a territory of 800-1,000 sq. km.

There is serious concern for the future of this tiger as it is still being poached and is also losing its habitat due to the timber trade. Even though the Russian governmemt has set up conservation parks to help save the Amur, it is still in danger of becoming extinct.

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Sumatran tiger

The Sumatran tiger Panthera tigris sumatrae is only found on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. That’s where it gets its name! There are only 400-500 of these tigers in the wild, making the Sumatran tiger the second most endangered species of tiger in the world.

It is the smallest of all the tiger species. The male weighs about 120 kg. and is about 2.5 m. long. The female weighs approximately 90 kg. and is about 2.2 m. long.

Its small size makes it easier for this tiger to move through the jungle. It is also a very fast swimmer and often attacks its prey in water. Its stripes are closer as compared to other tigers and its colouration is also darker. They have a ‘ruff’ (longer hair) at the back of the head and neck that is more distinct than in the other sub-species.

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South Chinese or Amoy tiger
The South Chinese tiger Panthera tigris amoyensis is also known as the Amoy tiger.

The Amoy tiger is found in central and eastern China and is considered to be the evolutionary ancestor of all the other tiger sub-species.

Did you know that China is the only country in the world where four sub-species of tiger are found (in the wild)?

Anyway, coming back to the Amoy tiger, it is the one of the smallest sub-species with short, broad stripes spaced far apart. The female of this species weighs 100 to 114 kg. and its length is about 2 m. The male, on the other hand, weighs 130-170 kg. and is length ranges from 2.3 m. to 2.6 m.

The south Chinese tiger is the most endangered species in the world. There are only 20-40 of these tigers left in the wild. 40 years ago, there were around 4,000 but they are being hunted mercilessly and may soon be extinct.

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Extinct tiger species

The Caspian, Balinese and Javan tigers have already become extinct. This means that we will never ever see these tigers again.

• The Caspian tiger Panthera tigris virgata once roamed Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Mongolia, and the Central Asiatic area of Russia. It probably became extinct in the 1950s.
• The Balinese tiger Panthera tigris balica lived in Bali, where the last tiger was believed to have been killed in 1937.
• The Javan tiger Panthera tigris sondaica lived on the Indonesian island of Java and has not been seen since 1972.

Many years ago, tigers used to live all across southern Asia, but because of people hunting them down and cutting trees from the forests, there are very few places in Asia where they can be found now. We must save the existing tigers so that they do not go extinct just as these three species already have.

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