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Order : CARNIVORA
Family : Felidae
Species : Panthera tigris
Head-body length : up to 2.3 metres
Tail length : up to 1.15 metres
Weight : up to 245 kg
One of the world's most
iconic mammals, the beautiful, but highly endangered, Tiger is still to be
found in parts of Southeast Asia.
Tigers are able to adapt to a variety of habitats including temperate and
tropical forests, degraded forest and scrub. Notwithstanding extreme
poaching pressure from man, often it is the availability of large prey which
limits their population. An adult tiger will
need to kill a large prey animal, such as a Sambar,
Gaur or Banteng,
around once a week to survive and to feed its cubs. Medium sized prey, such as
Muntjac and Wild Pig
are also taken.
Tigers are mainly solitary in habits, with young cubs being raised only by
the mother. Males have large territories of many tens of square kilometres which may overlap up to 3 female
territories, which are typically smaller. For both sexes, territories are smaller where there is sufficient
prey.
Globally, tigers now survive in less than 10% of their historic range. Much
of the lowlands in which they once lived is now heavily fragmented by human
development. Fortunately tigers are known to survive in forested, montane
areas, but poaching gangs still attempt to penetrate such places. Tiger
poaching is an organised, criminal activity undertaken in full knowledge of
prevailing laws. Such ruthless gangs are known to
cross international borders to undertake their illegal activities in
other countries of Southeast Asia, in particular Malaysia.
The long term survival of these most impressive cats needs a great deal of
poaching suppression and the end of the illegal trade in its body parts for
traditional medicine (most medicinal use of tiger parts is based on little more than
ill-informed, scientific ignorance). In addition, landscape level protection
is needed, as well as the protection of a prey base of large ungulates.
Of the recognised forms of tiger, three have become extinct due to
mankind's activities i.e. the Caspian Tiger, the Bali Tiger and the Javan
Tiger.
Having lost the Bali and
Javan tigers, only three forms still
remain within Southeast Asia - the Northern Indochinese Tiger (Myanmar,
Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia), which probably number less than 400, the
Malayan Tiger (Peninsular Malaysia, southern Thailand) of which only around
150 still survive (as of 2022), and
the Sumatran Tiger (Sumatra, Indonesia) with about 500 left. All populations
have suffered rapid decline in recent years and their current presence in
some territories, such as Vietnam and Cambodia, may be in doubt.
The other three surviving forms are the Bengal Tiger, Amur Tiger and
South China Tiger.
Fig 1 and 2 : A solitary, adult male Malayan Tiger
takes a shortcut along a forest road, and turns to face a concealed trail
camera. Such trail cameras, or camera traps, have proved an effective tool
in monitoring the presence of tigers and in making population estimates.
Fig 3 : Another specimen in degraded forest in Peninsular Malaysia.
All images courtesy
Kae Kawanishi / MYCAT
©
References :
Goodrich, J., Wibisono, H., Miquelle, D., Lynam, A.J., Sanderson, E.,
Chapman, S., Gray, T.N.E., Chanchani, P. & Harihar, A. 2022. Panthera
tigris. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022: e.T15955A214862019
Links :
MYCAT -
Citizen Action For Tigers
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