The scientific name or latin name for the siberian tiger which is also referred to the amur tiger is Panthera Tigris Altaica. The siberian tiger is also referred to by several other names besides the ones previously mentioned, like the Manchurian, Ussurian, or Northeast China tiger. These names for the siberian tiger should not be confused with the other subspecies like the bengal tiger, the indochinese tiger, the south china tiger, the malayan tiger and the sumatran tiger. Although they are very similar in appearance, the siberian tiger is distinctly different. The habitat or location of the tiger attributes to the names of the tiger, but the features the amur tiger has developed due to its location seperates them from the rest.
The siberian tiger is the largest of all the tiger, males are the largest of all weighing in at an average of 660 lbs and nearly 11 feet in length, some reports have records of male tigers as big as 13 feel from head to tail. Females are almost half of the weight at an average of 285lbs and 8ft in length. They live in northeastern birch forest Russian tundra where the weather is cold and harsh. The animals have developed a thick coat which insulates them from the snow. Their fur is also different in that it is a lighter orange hue than most tigers and its stripes are not black but instead are brown and their are fewer stripes on the cat than most other subspecies. There is an estimated 350-450 living in the wild and these number suggest growing stability in the populations. The areas that the big cats mostly live have very low human population or intervention with the food of the amur tiger. in the early 1990's a Cat Specialist Group from china estimated that there were only 35 living amur tigers in the wild and were rapidly on the verge of extinction. Since thte awareness rose, all tiger numbers have modestly grown. Today there are only 5 subspecies of tiger when only a hundred years ago there were 8. Three subspecies were driven to extinction through poaching because tigers arw prize game. Developing communities (of people) also have driven the tigers out of their natural habitats. Although poaching of tigers still exist, th awareness of them as critically endangered has decresed hunting incentives.
(National Geographic, Save the Tiger Fund and Discovery Channel)
It's good that an increase in awareness has decreased hunting incentive because it shows that people are listening.
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ReplyDeleteThe tiger inhabits the Boreal Forest of far east Asia, which is in parts of three different countries, China, North Korea and Russia. They specifically inhabit the Amur Ussuri region of Primorsky and Khabarovsky Krai.