Endangered Animal - Tigers

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Endangered Animal - Tigers
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Index

• Introduction
  
• The Tiger Family
  
• The Wild Tigers
  
• The Tiger Cubs
  
• The habitat of tigers
  
• Tigers diet
  
• Tiger Attacks
  
• Why are tigers endangered?
• Tigers In Crises
  
• The Future For Tigers
  

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Introduction

• Almost everyone has seen a tiger in a zoo. But
  few people have seen a wild tiger. For hundred
  of years, tigers and humans lived around each
  other peacefully. Humans have built homes in
  what was once the tigers habitat in past 30
  years.

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• As hunting and forest destruction continued,
  tigers became rarer and rarer. Only twenty
  years ago, these beautiful striped cats were in
  serious danger of becoming extinct Now we are
  going to tell you the story of the tiger.

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The Tiger Family

• There are eight kinds of tiger which are all
  listed in the data box behind. We call each
  different kind of tiger a subspecies. Three
  subspecies of tigers have recently become
  extinct. They are the Bali tiger, the Javan
  tiger and the Caspian tiger.

White tigers are not a separate subspecies, but a
rare kind of Indian tiger with a pale coat and
blue eyes.
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There are only totally 7500 -8000 tigers left in
the world!
Based on estimates in Tigers of the World
eds R.L. Tilson U.S. Seal (Noyes, 1987)
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The Wild Tigers

• In the wild, adult tigers spend much of their
  time alone. Each tiger spends most of its time
  in a certain area of land called a territory. It
  stays in its territory to catch prey, to drink
  and to rest during the day. Tigers love to stay
  in water even hours long.

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• Tigers scent-mark their territories by spraying
  urine on to trees or glass. The urine marks
  smell very strong and may last for several weeks.
  Each tiger has a slightly different smell. When
  another tiger smells, it knows that it is in
  another tigers territory.

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How big is an adult tiger ?
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Tigers are the largest members of the cat family!
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The Tiger Cubs

• Tigers are ready to mate when they are three to
  four years old. In the wild, a tiger usually
  gives birth to a litter of three or four cubs.
  Tiger cubs are tiny, blind and helpless, weighing
  about 2 kg each. The cubs spend their first four
  to eight weeks of life hidden away in a den.

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• Tiger cubs may start to eat meat when they are
  six weeks old. Before that, they need their
  mothers milk. Soon after this they leave the
  den and follow their mother. However, they do
  not hunt with their mother until they are about
  six months old.

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• Over the next year or so, they will learn how
  to hunt for themselves. When the cubs are about
  two years of age, they leave their mother for
  good. Now each young tiger must set up a
  territory and learn to survive on its own. Then
  they will mate with others and birth other cubs.

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The habitat of tigers

• Today most tigers live in the forests of
  South-east Asia. Only Siberian tigers live in
  the very cold cedar forests of northern Asia.
  Some live in areas of grassland or in marshy
  swamps. All tigers need thick bushes to hide in.
  However, the habitats of tigers are lost
  rapidly recently.

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Tigers diet

• Tigers are predators. They usually hunt deer
  and wild pig, but they will also eat monkeys,
  birds and even insects or crabs. Tigers mostly
  hunt at night. They catch their prey by stalking
  them. Then it kills the animal quickly, using
  its sharp canine teeth to bite the animals neck
  or throat.

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Tiger Attacks

• Tigers generally attack someone for one of
  three reason to get food, to defend or find new
  land, or to protect their young. The increase in
  tiger attacks on humans has been blamed on the
  loss of the tigers habitat and on illegal
  hunting.

Also, some tigers that are too old to catch wild
animals may learn to attack and eat people.
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Why are tigers endangered?

• Thousands of years ago in Asia, humans and
  tigers hunted the same animals for food. People
  began to hunt tigers because of this. At first
  tigers were killed with spears or bows and
  arrows. But the tigers knew their territories so
  well that they could escape easily. But

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• When guns were invented, killing tigers became
  much easier. Tiger-hunting became a sport for
  rich people who liked the tigers beautiful
  skins. Up to a hundred tigers could be shot on
  one hunting trip. As more and more tigers were
  shot, they became rare.

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• Tigers have also become rare because their
  forest homes have been destroyed. As the forests
  disappeared, the tigers and other animals that
  lived in them had less room to live. Often they
  moved to small areas of untouched forest. But
  even there, the tigers were not safe.

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Tigers In Crises

• By 1990, some people had realized that tigers
  were becoming rare in India. But before anything
  could be done to protect tigers, India became
  involved in the Second World War. During all the
  confusion, people carried on hunting tigers and
  clearing forests freely until 1969

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• In 1969, many tiger experts went to New Delhi
  in India to talk about tiger conservation. At
  the meeting in India, the tiger experts declared
  the tiger an endangered species. After this
  meeting, many of the countries where tigers still
  lived passed laws to ban tiger-hunting and try
  the best to save them.

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• Today there are eighteen tiger reserves in
  India, and many other tiger reserves in almost
  all the countries where tigers still live.
  Within many of these reserves tigers have become
  much less shy because people no longer shoot
  them. Tigers are safe in reserves.

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• If tigers were to be saved, then something had
  to be done quickly. We must not hunt or shoot
  tigers even buy any tigers skin. We can use
  less paper and save wooden furniture in order to
  protect natural forests. We can and we must
  protect tigers in our daily life or we cannot see
  them anymore.

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The Future For Tigers

• More and more people are living in the
  countries where tigers are found so the natural
  forests are still being cleared. Soon the only
  areas left for them may be the reserves. However
  many of the reserves are too small for a large
  number of tigers. So that they are in danger of
  becoming inbred.

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• There are also problems if the tiger population
  of a reserve grows too much. Then the reserve
  becomes overcrowded and tigers may spill out on
  to nearby farmland. Here they will eat the
  farmers cattle. Tigers also sometimes attack
  people. It makes the people nearby worry.

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• Tigers are safer today now that many of them
  live in reserves. But many beautiful wild tigers
  are still killed by poachers. There are still
  too many problems on tigers. They need your
  help. At last, I wish that these beautiful
  striped cats will survive forever.