Animal · India, Russia, Bangladesh
Tiger
Panthera tigris — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The tiger is the biggest wild cat in the world, known for its orange coat and black stripes. It lives alone in the forests of Asia, from India to Siberia.
Picture credit: Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Ram-Man (Public domain) · Yajuvendraupadhyaya (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the tiger live?
Home: Dense forests and mangrove swamps across Asia.
In the wild you find it in: India, Russia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand.
Conservation status from the IUCN: endangered.
The short profile
Fully grown it measures up to 3 m long, plus a 1 m tail. It weighs about 220 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
No two tigers have exactly the same stripe pattern, just like human fingerprints are all different. Tigers are powerful swimmers and often cool off in rivers and ponds, which is unusual for a cat. They hunt alone at night, creeping close to deer or wild pigs before a short, powerful charge. A century ago there were about 100,000 wild tigers; today fewer than 5,000 remain, mostly because their forest homes have been cut down and they were hunted for their fur. Conservation projects across Asia are now working hard to protect the forests tigers need to survive.
Find it on the globe
Tiger is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How many tigers are left in the world?
Fewer than about 5,000 wild tigers remain today, down from around 100,000 a century ago. Losing their forest habitat and past hunting are the main reasons their numbers fell so sharply.
Do tigers like water?
Yes, tigers are excellent swimmers and often bathe in rivers and pools to cool down, unlike most other cats. They can even swim across wide rivers while hunting or moving between territories.
Are tigers dangerous to humans?
Tigers generally avoid people and prefer to hunt deer and wild boar. Very rarely, an old, injured, or cornered tiger may attack a human, but most wild tigers try to stay well away from villages.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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