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You
can hear a tiger roar over a mile away!
A
tiger can eat 100 pounds of meat a night! Compare that to 400 hamburgers! They
need a lot of food because they go days between meals.
Tigers have been called man eaters, yet they eat frogs, monkeys, porcupines fowl,
and tortoises, especially when a good deer is hard to find.
Tigers have eyes that are the brightest of any other animal in the world. At dusk, or in
the beam of a torch, they blaze back the ambient light with awe-inspiring
intensity.
Tigers are the biggest cats in the world. They live in steamy hot jungles
as well as icy cold forests. There are five different kinds or subspecies of
tiger alive in the world today. These tigers are called
Siberian, South China, Indochinese, Bengal, and Sumatran. Tigers are an
endangered species; only about 5,000 to 7,400 tigers are left in the wild. Three
tiger subspecies, the Bali, Javan, and Caspian tigers have become
extinct in the past 70 years.
Depending on the
subspecies, the head-body length of a tiger is about 41/2 to 9 feet (1.4-2.8
m). The length of the tail is 3 to 4 feet (90-120 cm). The foot pads vary in
size with age, resulting in inaccurate estimates when used in censuring wild
populations.
Tigers have round pupils and
yellow irises (except for the blue eyes of white tigers). Due to a retinal
adaptation that reflects light back to the retina, the night vision of tigers
is six times better than that of humans.
Siberian
tigers are the heaviest subspecies at 500 or more pounds (225 kg), with males
heavier than females. The lightest subspecies is the Sumatran; males weigh about
250 pounds (110 kg) and females around 200 pounds (90 kg).
The size of a tiger's territory depends on the
amount of food available, and usually ranges from about 10 to 30 square miles
(26-78 sq. km). Siberian tigers sometimes have really big territories (as
large as 120 square miles).
Although tigers usually live alone, tiger territories can overlap. A
male tiger's territory usually overlaps those of several female tigers.
Tigers mark their territories by spraying bushes
and trees with a special mixture of urine and scent gland secretions. They
also leave scratch marks on trees.
Tigers can see in the dark six times better than
humans can. They can also see in color.
The heaviest tiger recorded in the
Guinness Book of World Records is a 1,025-pound male Siberian tiger.
Young tigers live with their mother until they
are two to three years old, then they find their own territories.
Unlike some big cats like lions, adult tigers like to live alone
(except for mother tigers with cubs). This is partly because in the forest, a
single tiger can sneak up and surprise its prey better than a group of tigers
can.
Most tigers have an orange coat with dark brown or black stripes
accented with white. Tigers that live in cold climates (Siberian tigers) have
thicker fur than tigers that live in warm climates.
A tiger's tail is 3 to 4 feet long, about half as
long as its body. Tigers use their tails for balance when they run through
fast turns. They also use their tails to communicate with other tigers.
No
one knows exactly why tigers are striped, but scientists think that the
stripes act as camouflage, and help tigers hide from their prey. The Sumatran
tiger has the most stripes of all the tiger subspecies, and the Siberian tiger
has the fewest stripes. Tiger stripes are like human fingerprints; no two
tigers have the same pattern of stripes.
A tiger's paw prints are called pug
marks.
Like domestic cats, tiger claws
are retractable. Tiger scratches on trees serve as territorial markers.
They often carry the Chinese mark of Wang or King on the forehead.
The life span of tigers in the wild is thought to
be about 10 years. Tigers in zoos live twice as long.
Tiger cubs are born blind and
weigh only about 2 to 3 pounds (1 kg), depending on the subspecies. They live
on milk for 6-8 weeks before the female begins taking them to kills to feed.
Tigers have fully developed canines by 16 months of age, but they do not begin
making their own kills until about 18 months of age.
