Tiger

A pattern that’s a fingerprint

Every tiger’s stripe pattern is unique — like a fingerprint. The stripes also appear on the underlying skin, not just the fur, so a shaved tiger would still be striped. The pattern serves as camouflage in dappled forest light, breaking up the body outline as the cat moves through tall grass and underbrush.

Six surviving subspecies

Of nine recognized subspecies, three (Bali, Javan, and Caspian) went extinct in the 20th century. The six that remain:

• Bengal — India and the surrounding region; the largest population.
• Indochinese — Southeast Asian peninsula.
• Malayan — Peninsular Malaysia, recently elevated from subspecies status.
• Siberian (Amur) — the largest individuals; Russian Far East and northeast China.
• South China — functionally extinct in the wild.
• Sumatran — the smallest subspecies, found only on Sumatra.

Hunting and prey

Tigers hunt by stealth and ambush, taking deer, wild boar, and occasionally larger prey like gaur (an Indian wild bovine). A single hunt can require an explosive sprint of up to 65 km/h, but only over short distances; tigers tire quickly. They succeed in only about 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 hunting attempts.

Conservation crisis

Wild tiger numbers fell from an estimated 100,000 in 1900 to about 3,200 in 2010. Since then, dedicated conservation across India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Russia has pushed numbers to roughly 4,500 — the first sustained increase in over a century. Habitat fragmentation and poaching for traditional medicine remain the dominant threats.