Overview

The tiger is the biggest and the most terrible of large cats. Adult males of the Amur tigers reach in length more than three and a half meters and more than 315 kilograms weigh. Subspecies which live in tropical areas of an Asian area, slightly more small. For example, Bengalese tigers usually weigh no more than 225 kilograms. A sort this huge striped cat from the woods of Siberia, from Northern China and Korea. About 10 thousand years ago tigers promoted to the south through the Himalayas and eventually extended almost across all India, Malayan peninsula and the islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali. But, despite so huge area, the tiger became the most rare of cats now. In India population of tigers was reduced from 20 thousand as it was estimated about ten years ago, to 2 thousand and even less. On Sumatra, Java and Bali more dark and small island subspecies disappeared absolutely. Approach of the person to habitat of tigers, and also intensive hunting for them gave a magnificent animal on an extinction side.

When the tiger is hungry, he is ready to eat nearly everything that appears on his way. Studying of one Bengalese population revealed that the menu can consist from: three species of a deer, wild bulls, domestic cows, buffalo s, monkeys, boars, bears, lynxes, badgers, wolves, lizards, snakes, frogs, crabs, fish, locust, termites, drop, grass, and in rare instances and soils. Cases of attack of a tiger on crocodiles, pythons, leopards and even are known, in cases when he long starved, on other tigers. Meet among them and cannibals though tigers and people usually coexist, not too or at all without being interested with each other. However the man-eating tiger should appear, and life of the whole areas will be paralyzed by fear until the cannibal is killed.

In a zoo or in circus bright strips fix all eyes to a tiger. But such coloring does it absolutely imperceptible in thickets of an elephant grass and in a bush where he usually hunts. Orange and black colors are deeper and more dark at tropical tigers who concede in growth to the more northern relatives.

Mainly, the tiger leads a single life. Sometimes it is possible to notice how the male hunts together with the girlfriend. However, this temporary phenomenon limited several weeks of the period of pairing in the winter or in the spring. In the same way and the territory which the tiger marks urine, notifying a roar that these places belong to it, it appears only the temporary house. In some weeks almost all tigers start conducting vagrant life again, and then mark the new territory.

In the conditions of the wild nature the tiger lives no more than twenty years. However now, when the impact by sight promptly increases, only perfectly physically developed tiger with very fast reactions can hold on to this term.

The only cat who likes to float. All cats are able to float though in the majority prefer to steer clear of water and approach it, only to get drunk. Some — in particular, a jaguar and yaguarund — without hesitation plunge into the water to seize the water pig or fish. But only the tiger as though bathes just for the hell of it. When many thousands years ago tigers crossed the Himalayas and located in tropics, they found out that water — an excellent cooler. Now in the stuffy and hot jungle of India tigers for hours sit or lie, having plunged up to a neck into water an ozerka or small rivers, and enjoy a cool.

Tracking down production, the tiger uses the masking coloring that under cover of dense vegetation to come nearer to the planned victim on some meters, and then to rush on it prompt breakthrough. As well as other big cats, a tiger kills production, gnawing through it a throat and often breaking thus to it a neck. He hunts usually in twilight or at night, but sometimes hunger forces it to forget commitment to darkness and to rush on herd of antelopes or other production in broad daylight. The tiger, as a rule, silently hunts and gives a vote, only when looks for the girlfriend. Then the night jungle is shaken with hours by the frightening roar, so far, at last, there is no the tigress who heard a passionate appeal.

Tiger - an animal clean. After a lunch it puts the fur in order, carefully licking it language; tiger cubs are licked by a tigress. Clears claws of the meal remains, scratching them soft bark.

Tiger cubs are born blind and absolutely helpless, on two, or four in a dung and on the eleventh month of life are already able to track down and kill three alone small production. However they remain with mother of years to two. That is why sometimes it is possible to see at production of three, and even four tigers.

About a tiger there is a set of legends. And one, arising again and again, narrated about "a ghost of the jungle" — a white tiger. In 1951 the legend turned back былью — in the Indian district of Reeve the white tiger was caught. Offered it in the girlfriend an ordinary tigress at whom then was born four normal, orange-black kittens. The coupled to one of the daughters, white tiger became the father of three tiger cubs two of which were born white, with characteristic bluish strips. This unusual family gave rise to a number of the most interesting mutants.

After the accounting of tigers in India showed the menacing reduction of population of these magnificent animals, the Indian government together with several international organizations for conservation undertook "Operation a tiger" and founded some special tigerish wildlife reserves. In these rather small areas the issue will also be resolved, to be to a tiger or not to be.