Tiger





The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest cat species, reaching a total body leng

th of up

to 3.38 m (11.1 ft) over curves and weighing up to 388.7 kg

(857 lb) in the wild. Its most recognisable feature

i

s a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with a lighter underside. The species is classified in the ge

nus Panthera with the lion, leopard and jaguar. Tigers are apex predators, primarily preying on ungulates such as deer and bovids. They are territorial and generally solitary but social animals, often requiring large contigue of the more densely populated places on Earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans.

Tigers once ranged widely across Asia, from Turkey in the west to the eastern coast of Russia. Over the past 100 years, they have lost 93% of their historic range, and have been extirpated from southwest and central Asia, from the islands of Java andBali, and from large areas of Southeast and Eastern Asia. Today, they range from the Siberian taiga to open grasslands and tropical mangrove swamps. The remaining six tiger subspecies have been classified as endangered by IUCN. The global population in the wild is estimated to number between 3,062 and 3,948 individuals, down from around 100,000 at the start of the 20th century, with most remaining populations occurring in small pockets isolated from each other. Major reasons for population decline include habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation and poaching. The extent of area occupied by tigers is estimated at less than 1,184,911 km2  (457,497 sq mi), a 41% decline from the area estimated in the mid-1990s.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger

Tigers have made a great  comeback after Earth population has shrunk to 1 billion and efforts to restore nature regions could be made on aglobal scale



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