TIGER

The tiger (Panthera Tigris) is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length 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 is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with a lighter underside.

 The species is classified in the genus Panthera with the lion, leopard and jaguar. Tigers are apex predators, primarily preying on ungulates such as deer and bovid. They are territorial and generally solitary but social animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey requirements. This coupled with the fact that they are indigenous to some 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 and Bali, and from large areas of Southeast and Eastern Asia. The tiger's closest living relatives are the lion, leopard and jaguar, all of which are classified under the genus Panthera. The oldest remains of an extinct tiger relative, called Panthera  or the Longdan tiger, have been found in the Gansu province of north-western China. This species is considered to be a sister tax on to the extant tiger and lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene. Tigers have muscular bodies with powerful forelimbs, large heads and long tails. The pelage is dense and heavy; coloration varies between shades of orange and brown with white ventral areas and distinctive vertical black stripes, whose patterns are unique to each individual.

 Their function is likely for camouflage in vegetation such as long grass with strong vertical patterns of light and shade. The tiger is one of only a few striped cat species; it is not known why spots are the more common camouflage pattern among felids. The tiger's stripes are also found on the skin, so that if it were to be shaved, its distinctive coat pattern would still be visible. They have a mane-like heavy growth of fur around the neck and jaws and long whiskers, especially in males. Tigers are the most variable in size of all big cats, much more so than lions. The Bengal and Siberian subspecies are the tallest at the shoulder and thus considered the largest living felids, ranking with the extinct Caspian tiger among the biggest that ever existed. A well-known allele found only in the Bengal subspecies produces the white tiger, a colour variant first recorded in the early 19th century and found in an estimated one in 10,000 natural births.

 Genetically, whiteness is recessive: a cub is white only when both parents carry the allele for whiteness. White tigers are more frequently bred in captivity, where the comparatively small gene pool can lead to inbreeding. Attempts have been made to cross white and orange tigers to remedy this, often mixing subspecies in the process. Inbreeding has given white tigers a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palate, scoliosis (curvature of the spine), and strabismus (squint).During the 20th century, tigers became extinct in western Asia and were restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. 

They were extirpated on the island of Bali in the 1940s, around the Caspian Sea in the 1970s, and on Java in the 1980s. This was the result of habitat loss and the ongoing killing of tigers and tiger prey.

 Today, their fragmented and partly degraded range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia. Tigers can occupy a wide range of habitat types, but will usually require sufficient cover, proximity to water, and an abundance of prey. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage colouring is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared with the multiple felines in a pride. A further habitat requirement is the placement of suitably secluded den locations, which may consist of caves, large hollow trees, or dense vegetation. Adult tigers lead largely solitary lives.

 They establish and maintain home ranges. Resident adults of either sex generally confine their movements to a territory, within which they satisfy their needs and those of their growing cubs. Young female tigers establish their first territories close to their mother's. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory reduces with time. Males, however, migrate further than their female counterparts and set out at a younger age to mark out their own area. A young male acquires territory either by seeking out an area devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory until he is older and strong enough to challenge the resident male dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250 kg (550 lb) male nilgai – a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male, all offspring from Padmini's previous litters, and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified.

 By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill. In the wild, tigers mostly feed on large and medium-sized animals, preferring native ungulates weighing at least 90 kg (200 lb).They typically have little or no deleterious effect on their prey populations. Sambar deer, chital, barasingha, wild boar, gaur, nilgai and both water buffalo and domestic buffalo, in descending order of preference, are the tiger's favoured prey in Tamil Nadu, India, while gaur and sambar are the preferred prey and constitute the main diet of tigers in other parts of India. During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, a pattern of behaviour that had not previously been ywitnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be unusually successful, with 20% of hunts ending in a kill. During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, a pattern of behaviour that had not previously been witnessed in over 200 years of observations.

 Moreover, he appeared to be unusually successful, with 20% of hunts ending in a kill. Historically, tigers have been hunted at a large scale so their famous striped skins could be collected. The trade in tiger skins peaked in 1960s, just before international conservation efforts took effect. By 1977, a tiger skin in an English market was considered to be worth $4,250 US dollars. Man-eaters have been a particular problem in recent decades in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have hunted humans. Because of rapid habitat loss attributed to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans. The Sundarbans area had 129 human deaths from tigers from 1969 to 1971. In the 10 years prior to that period, about 100 attacks per year in the Sundarbans, with a high of around 430 in some years of the 1960s.Unusually, in some years in the Sundarbans, more humans are killed by tigers than vice versa.

In 1972, India's production of honey and beeswax dropped by 50% when at least 29 people who gathered these materials were devoured.