What’s so special about tigers?
What’s so special about tigers? As the largest member of the tiger family, tigers are powerful and one of nature’s most worrying predators. Their beautiful orange and black striped coats provide camouflage when hunting at night. Learn what’s special about tigers below: What’s special about tigers 1
A tiger has a strong body, well-developed forelimbs, a large head, and a tail that is about half as long as its body. Its fur is dense and thick, varying in color between orange and brown, with a white area on its belly, and each individual has unique vertical black stripes that facilitate camouflage among vegetation. Tigers are one of the only striped cats. When a tiger is shaved, its fur pattern is still visible, not due to skin pigmentation, but due to hair follicles embedded in the skin. Their necks and chins are covered with thick, mane-like hair and long beards, especially on males. The pupils are round with yellow irises. The small, round ears have a prominent white spot on the back surrounded by black. These points are thought to play an important role in intraspecific communication.
The skull of a tiger is similar to that of a lion, with the forehead region generally being less concave or flattened and the post-occipital region being slightly longer. The lion's skull shows a larger nasal opening. Because the skulls of the two species differ in size, the structure of the jaw is a reliable indicator of their identification. Tigers have fairly strong teeth, and their somewhat curved canines are the longest among living cats.
There is obvious sexual dimorphism between males and females, with females always being smaller than males. Among large tigers, the size difference between males and females is even greater, with males weighing 1.7 times as much as females. Males also have wider front paw pads than females, allowing sex to be determined from the footprints. It is speculated that the body size of different tiger populations may be related to climate, which can be explained by thermoregulation and Bergmann's law (the body size of the same type of warm-blooded animal will increase with the increase of latitude or altitude of the living area), or it can be explained by modern There are prey distribution and body sizes to explain.
Generally speaking, the body length of males is between 2.5-3.9 meters, the weight is between 90-306 kg, and the skull length is between 316-383 mm. The body length of females ranges from 2.0-2.75 meters, the weight is about 65-167 kg, and the skull length is between 268-318 mm. Regardless of gender, the length of the tail ranges from 0.6 to 1.1 meters. Bengal tigers and Siberian tigers are the tallest cats at the shoulder, and they are also listed as the largest cats of all time. Tigers in the Sunda Islands (a series of islands in the southwestern Malay Archipelago) are smaller and lighter than those in mainland Asia, rarely exceeding 142 kilograms.
The large male Siberian tiger (also known as the Siberian tiger) is more than 3.5 meters long and weighs at least 300 kilograms. This is much heavier than the Sumatran tiger's weight of 75-140 kilograms. At the shoulders, the height of the tiger may be between 0.7-1.22 meters. The total length of a Bengal tiger male from nose to tail root is between 2.7-3.1 meters, and the weight is between 180-258 kilograms, while the length of a female Bengal tiger is 2.40-2.65 meters, and the weight is between 100-160 kilograms. In northern India and Nepal, weight averages are greater, with males weighing up to 235 kg, while females average 140 kg, and weight records of wild individuals indicate they are heavier than wild Siberian tigers.
Siberian Tiger
According to reports, the largest wild tiger in the world is 3.38 meters long. The heaviest tiger in captivity is the Siberian tiger, which weighs 465 kilograms. The heaviest wild tiger on record was a Bengal tiger from northern India that was shot in 1967. It was said to have weighed 388.7 kilograms, but it ate a big meal before being killed. If Without this meal, it would have lost significant weight.
Variants with different colors
White tigers lack yellow pigment and have dark brown stripes and blue eyes. This change in pigmentation is caused by a mutated gene that is inherited as an autosomal recessive condition. It is not albinism because the black parts are barely affected. White tigers have been recorded in the Rewa region of the Indian states of Odisha, Bihar, Assam and Madhya Pradesh in the early to mid-20th century. The local Indian Maharaja started raising tigers in the early 1950s and kept a white male tiger and his daughter of normal color together, and they had white cubs. To maintain this recessive trait, only a small number of white individuals are used in captive breeding, resulting in a high degree of inbreeding. Inbreeding degeneration is the main cause of health problems in captive white tigers. White tigers suffer from strabismus, stillbirth, deformity, premature death and many other problems. Other physiological defects include cleft palate and scoliosis.
Real albino tigers do exist and can be called "snow-white" tigers. In this color change, the stripes are very faint, and the tail has a reddish-brown ring.
The Golden Tiger, another color variant, has light golden fur with gold and reddish-brown stripes. These types are rarely recorded in the wild.
What’s so special about tigers 2
Ten characteristics and functions of tigers
1. A tiger’s hind legs are longer than its front legs. Tigers have more than 100 stripes, like fingerprints. No two tigers have the same pattern. A tiger's upper dog is about 4 inches (10 centimeters) long, about the size of a human finger. A tiger's roar can be heard 2 miles (3 kilometers) into the forest.
2. Tigers are called super carnivores, which means they only live on meat. Tigers eat cows, birds, monkeys, lizards, crocodiles and even baby elephants. Their digestive systems simply cannot digest fruits, plants or insects.
3. Around the world, the tiger has always been a symbol of power and fighting spirit. The earliest tiger fossil is from two million years ago, and a tiger spent about 18 hours sleeping every day. An adult tiger can jump 9 yards (8 meters) and jump 5 yards (5 meters) vertically.
4. Except for polar bears, tigers have the largest brains of all carnivores. According to ancient beliefs, tiger body parts have magical powers to cure illnesses. Tiger bones were said to cure weakness; beards were used to treat toothaches; and tiger tails were used to treat skin ailments, long-standing beliefs that fueled disastrous tiger poaching.
5. Due to their large size, tigers can starve to death within two to three weeks. One hundred years ago, there were eight different subspecies of tigers. Today, three of these subspecies are extinct and others are dangerously close to being wiped from the face of the earth forever.
6. Bali tigers are deliberately hunted in Bali because they are considered evil. Tigers' night vision is six times that of humans, and tiger saliva acts as an antiseptic, which is useful for cleaning their wounds. A tiger can eat nearly 1/5 of its body weight in one meal - about 88 pounds (40 kilograms). In one year, an adult male tiger can eat up to 8,000 pounds of meat.
7. Modern tigers do not come from prehistoric saber-toothed tigers. In fact, the two are not closely related. The South China tiger has the least stripes, and the Sumatran tiger has the most stripes. The Siberian tiger has fewer stripes than the Bengal tiger, and its stripes are brown instead of black.
8. Unlike lions, which are prey that fight to the death, tigers often share food and take turns eating. Each tiger has its own scent thanks to individualized scent glands. Tigers, whose claws can grow up to 4.7 inches (12 centimeters), have killed more people than lions or leopards, probably killing hundreds of thousands of people during the 19th century.
9. On the black market, a dead adult tiger can be sold for more than 10,000 US dollars. Over the past 100 years, more than 95% of the tiger population has disappeared, and there are now only 5,000 tigers left in the world. Their numbers are still declining due to poaching and habitat loss.
10. Tigers can run at a speed of 35 miles per hour, but they can only run short distances. Most of their prey can outrun them, especially deer and antelope. A captive tiger can live up to 20 years, and a wild tiger's lifespan is between 10 and 15 years. What’s so special about tigers 3
Predatory characteristics of tigers
Tigers are cats, belonging to the subfamily Leopardae, one of the 5 species in the genus Leopard, and the other 4 The medium species are lion, leopard, jaguar and snow leopard.
Tigers mainly feed on large and medium-sized mammals, especially ungulates weighing 60-250 kilograms. Widely ranged, frequently preyed species include black deer (a large deer native to Southeast Asia), red deer, swamp deer, dolphin deer, white-spotted deer (native to India) and wild boar. Especially black deer, wild boar, but also elk and swamp deer are the most popular species. According to reports, when hunting black deer (which account for 60% of tiger prey in India), tigers will imitate the estrus calls of male black deer to attract them. Tigers are capable of hunting larger prey, such as the Indian black cow, but will also opportunistically consume smaller prey, such as monkeys, peacocks and other land birds, hares, porcupines, and fish. They also prey on other carnivores including dogs, leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. Although tigers are almost exclusively carnivores, they occasionally eat plants for dietary fiber, such as the fruits of the pomelo.
In Siberia, in addition to elk and wild boar (these two animals account for almost 80% of prey), tigers also prey on sika deer, moose, roe deer and musk deer. Asiatic black bears and Ussuri brown bears may also become tiger prey, accounting for up to 40.7% of Siberian tiger prey, depending on local conditions and bear populations. In Sumatra (the western Indonesian island), prey includes black deer, muntjac, wild boar and Malayan tapirs.
Tigers generally do not prey on adult Asian elephants and Indian rhinoceros, but there are reports that they will kill more vulnerable calves. However, adult rhinos occasionally fall prey to tigers. When tigers come close to human settlements, they sometimes prey on domestic animals such as cattle, horses, and donkeys. Old or injured tigers that are no longer able to hunt wild prey turn into man-eaters, a situation that occurs frequently across India.
But there are also cases of healthy tigers attacking humans. In the Sundarbans (located in India and Bangladesh), healthy tigers prey on fishermen and villagers, so nearby humans form a small part of the tigers' diet.
Tigers are considered primarily nocturnal predators, but they also hunt during the day in areas where humans are absent. They usually hunt alone like most other cats, ambushing their prey, using their size and strength to unbalance their prey, jumping onto their prey almost simultaneously, knocking the prey down, and then sinking their teeth into the prey's throat or neck. A successful hunt. Despite their size, tigers can reach speeds of 49-65 kilometers per hour, but only for short periods of time, so they must be very close to their prey before jumping out of hiding. If the prey has previously detected the tiger's stalking, the tiger will usually give up the hunt rather than chase the prey or fight it head-on. Tigers can jump horizontally to a height of up to 10 meters, while jumps of only half that distance are common.
When hunting larger animals, tigers prefer to bite the throat, grabbing the prey with their powerful forelimbs while throwing it to the ground. The tiger bites the prey's neck tightly until it The target was strangled to death. In this way, Indian gaur and buffalo, which weighed more than a ton, were killed by tigers that weighed about one-sixth of their weight. Although tigers can kill healthy adult cattle, they usually choose calves or infirm ones. This healthy adult prey is dangerous to handle because of its long, strong horns, legs and tusks, all of which are potentially fatal to tigers. With the exception of tigers, no other living land predator regularly hunts such large prey alone.
For smaller prey, such as monkeys and hares, the tiger will bite the nape of the neck, usually severing the spinal cord, piercing the trachea, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. Although rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded killing their prey by swiping it with their talons. Their claws are powerful enough to crush the skulls of livestock and break the backs of sloth bears. After killing its prey, tigers sometimes drag the prey to hide it in vegetation, usually by grabbing the bite site with their mouths. It also requires a lot of physical strength. In one case, a tiger killed an adult bison and dragged the huge carcass a distance of 12 meters. Later, when 13 men tried to drag the bison carcass at the same time, they could not move it. An adult tiger can go without food for two weeks and then eat 34 kilograms of meat in one sitting. In captivity, adult tigers eat 3 to 6 kilograms of meat every day.