Tiger

Tiger Overview

The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest of all wild cat species, instantly recognized by its bold vertical stripes — a pattern as unique to each individual as a fingerprint, and one that extends down through the fur to the skin itself.

Tigers are typically silky reddish-orange with dark stripes that camouflage them in tall grass and dappled forest light. Rarer color variants include black-striped white tigers, all-white (albino) tigers, and — very occasionally — near-black individuals. Solitary by nature, a tiger marks and defends its territory by scratching trees and scent-marking rather than living or hunting in groups.

Male tigers stand roughly 3–3.5 feet at the shoulder and measure 4.6–9.2 feet long plus a 2–3 foot tail; a Siberian tiger, the largest subspecies, can weigh up to 660 lbs, while the Sumatran tiger, the smallest, weighs as little as 220 lbs. Nine subspecies were historically recognized — three are already extinct, and the six below survive today:

Subspecies

• Bengal TigerPanthera tigris tigris
  More than 3,500 remain; India, Bangladesh, Nepal — most numerous subspecies.
• Siberian (Amur) TigerPanthera tigris altaica
  Around 450 remain; largest subspecies, Russian Far East temperate forest.
• Sumatran TigerPanthera tigris sumatrae
  400–500 remain; smallest living subspecies, Sumatran rainforest.
• Malayan TigerPanthera tigris jacksoni
  Fewer than 150 mature adults remain; Peninsular Malaysia.
• Indochinese TigerPanthera tigris corbetti
  Likely fewer than 400 remain; fragmented mainland Southeast Asia.
• South China TigerPanthera tigris amoyensis
  Not confirmed in the wild since the 1970s; likely extinct in the wild.

Tiger Habitat & Range

Tigers once ranged continuously from eastern Turkey to the Russian Far East. Today their range is fragmented into isolated pockets across South and Southeast Asia, India, and the Russian Far East.

Bengal tigers inhabit grasslands, dry forests, and the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans, where they are unusually strong swimmers and readily cross tidal rivers. Amur tigers survive in the cold temperate forests of the Russian Far East, adapted to deep snow and freezing winters. Sumatran tigers, the smallest subspecies, are confined to the rainforests of Sumatra.

Each adult tiger is solitary and defends a home range marked with scent, claw marks, and scrapes — a male's territory typically overlaps the smaller ranges of two or three females.

Tiger Diet & Hunting

Tigers are obligate carnivores and mostly nocturnal hunters, relying on stealth rather than sustained speed. They stalk to within 30–35 feet of prey before a short, explosive charge and a pounce.

Primary prey includes sambar deer, chital, wild boar, and cattle, with larger individuals occasionally taking young gaur or buffalo. Most hunts fail — tigers succeed roughly once in ten to twenty attempts — so on a successful night a tiger may eat 33–40 lbs of meat in one sitting and defend the kill for several days.

Cubs are born blind and helpless after a gestation of 100–112 days, in litters of two to three, weighing about 2 lbs at birth. They nurse for up to six months and stay with their mother until around age two — cub mortality is high, and only about half survive to adulthood. Tigers reach sexual maturity between 3 and 6 years old, and live 10–15 years in the wild or 20–25 years in captivity.

Tiger Conservation Status

Wild tiger numbers have fallen from an estimated 100,000 at the start of the 20th century to roughly 5,500 today (2023 estimate), driven chiefly by poaching for skins and traditional-medicine markets, and by habitat loss to logging and agriculture.

The tiger is listed on CITES Appendix I and protected across its range. India's Project Tiger, launched in 1973, established a national network of tiger reserves and is credited with stabilizing — and in recent decades growing — the country's population, which now holds most of the world's wild tigers.

Three subspecies — the Bali, Javan, and Caspian tiger — have already gone extinct in the 20th century; the South China tiger has not been confirmed in the wild since the 1970s.