About the Siberian tiger

Siberian tiger

Panthera tigris altaica

Order: Carnivora

Family: Feline (Felidae)

Panthera

Guarded:

In 1947, the tiger was taken under protection - in Russia hunting for it was completely banned. This amazing beast is listed in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Red Book of the Russian Federation as a threatened species and is included in Annex II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Where he lives: Currently, 95% of the entire population of the Amur tiger lives in the Far East of Russia. 5% in China.

Size: The body length of the Amur tiger without tail is 160-200 cm, the length of the tail is about 100 cm. The weight of an adult animal can reach 300 kg. The largest recorded mass of the tiger is 384 kg.

Appearance:

The Amur tiger is larger than its southern relatives, its fur is thicker and lighter. On the reddish background, forming a complex pattern, there are transverse dark bands. The figure on the tiger's skin is unique, like a fingerprint in a person: you will not find two tigers with the same pattern.

Black strips, despite their brightness, serve as tiger camouflage. But the big white spots on the black back of the ears have a different purpose. When a tigress walks through the forest, she puts her ears so that the black and white field is perfectly visible to the cubs following her.

In winter, the tiger skin becomes lighter, becoming thick and fluffy. The tiger is not afraid of big snows - wide paws help him to walk on them.

Behavior and lifestyle:

Tigers are almost constantly in motion. Bypassing their territory, they are looking for prey. The boundaries of their site tigers, like other cats, marked with odorous marks. And they scrape the ground or, rising to their hind legs, rip off the bark from the trees. Such "bully" can sometimes be found at an altitude of 2-2.5 meters above the ground.

Tigers are conservative - they use the same paths for years and if they have enough feed within their holdings, they never leave them.

The sizes of habitats of tigers are different. They depend on the sex and age of the animal and on how many hoofed animals are found in this area. Tigresses with small cubs, for example, use for life and hunting a much smaller area than single animals.

The Amur tiger has tremendous power and well-developed sense organs. At the same time, he has to devote a lot of time to hunting. Hunt tigers, mostly on large ungulates. To catch the victim, the tiger crawls to its victim, crouching back and resting its hind paws on the ground. Only one out of ten attempts ends successfully. And if the throw failed, the tiger will prefer not to pursue the victim, but to look for a new one. When game in the forests becomes small, Amur tigers sometimes attack large livestock and dogs.

Food:

The basis of the ration of the tiger is deer, boar and spotted deer. The daily norm of tiger food is 9-10 kilograms of meat. For the safe existence of one individual, about 50-70 ungulates a year are needed.

The Amur tiger can not only hunt, but also fish - during spawning it catches fish on the ruts of mountain rivers.

Reproduction:

It is believed that the Amur tigers are polygamous. Periods of reproduction and the appearance of cubs are not confined to any particular time of the year. And yet the offspring of tigers most often appear in April-June.
After three to four months of waiting, two or three blind tigers appear in the female. The mother tries to arrange a lair for her cubs in the safest places difficult to access: in dense thickets, caves, crevices of rocks - where they will be invisible to other predators.

Approximately on the ninth day after the birth of tigers open their eyes, and at the age of two weeks, sharp teeth begin to grow. The mother feeds the children with milk for six months. Leaving the shelter, two-month small predators for the first time taste the taste of game - the mother begins to bring them meat.

Tiger cubs play a lot, learning the skills necessary for hunting. From six months old grown-up cubs are escorted by the mother during the hunt and comprehend the wisdom of finding and extracting food. At one-year-old age cubs try to apply for the first time all received hunting skills. But the first attempts to get food do not always end in luck. Adolescents will be able to overcome large prey by themselves only by two years.

The first few years of his life the cubs are keeping with their mother. The tigress hunts along with the young tigers until they reach puberty. In the second year of life, young tigers are separated from their mother, but they continue to live on its site.

Lifespan:

In the wild is 16-18 years, in captivity - up to 25 years.

Interesting Facts:

The Amur tiger is the largest subspecies of the tiger, occupying the northernmost part of the range, the only one that has mastered life in the snows.

In the Amur, the tiger fur is the thickest and longest, but the bands are smaller than the other subspecies. The number of tiger bands can reach up to 100.
Today, tigers are preserved in 14 countries - Bangladesh, Bhutan, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, China, North Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand.

Over the past 100 years, the number of tigers in the world has decreased by 25 times