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Bengal Tiger Reserve...
Bengal Tiger (Panthera Tigris)...
Tigers are the largest members of the cat family and are renowned for their power and strength. There were eight subspecies of tiger, but three of these became extinct in the twentieth century. Over the last hundred years, tiger populations have decreased from hundreds of thousands to fewer than possibly 7000.
West Midland Safari Park keeps Bengal Tigers, which are found primarily in India, but also Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Southern Tibet. It is the most common of all tiger subspecies and accounts for nearly half of all tiger numbers. The Bengal Tiger lives in a variety of habitats including grasslands, mangroves and various types of forest. The tiger is usually solitary and has a home range of approximately 20 square km. The tiger marks its territory by spraying surrounding trees and bushes with urine, dropping prominently placed faeces and leaving deep set scratch marks on tree trunks. Tigers circumnavigate their territory every few days and the territory of a male tiger often overlaps several female territories. The majority of cubs are born in the Spring, after a pregnancy of about three and a half months. Females give birth to 1-6 cubs, every two to three years and raise their young with no help from the male. Tigers usually live until 12-15 years in the wild, but have been known to reach 30 years in captivity.
The tigers’ characteristic reddish gold fur with black stripes is easily visible to visitors in a zoo, but for tigers in their natural habitat of forest and reed bed these markings are camouflage; as they move their stripes appear to change their shape and blend them into their surroundings. Tigers have over one hundred stripes, but no two tigers have the same pattern. Very rarely, the Bengal Tiger produces white specimens. The earliest recordings of sightings of white tigers date from the mid 16th century, but only a dozen sightings have been noted in the last 100 years. The last wild white tiger was sighted in 1951! White tigers are neither a separate sub species nor albino, but instead have reduced pigmentation. White tigers are produced when two carriers of the recessive gene, who may not necessarily be white themselves, breed. This condition is known as leucism.
All tigers are now strictly protected and are the most endangered of all the big cats; having no predators except for man. Population numbers have decreased dramatically due to habitat destruction and large scale poaching. Tigers are an umbrella species, meaning that in order to save tigers from extinction we must commit to save their habitat. There are now more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild and a recent census of the Bengal Tiger, undertaken by the Wildlife Institute for India, has estimated that there are only 1,300-1,500 left in India; that is less than half the population previously estimated in the 2001-2002 census. |
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