Characteristic features at 2:38 AM

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS:
Tigers are among the most recognizable of all the cats. They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way that fingerprints are used to identify people. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears. These spots, called ocelli, serve a social function, by communicating the animal's mental state to conspecifics in the gloom of dense forest or in tall grass.Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild.They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves.



SUBSPECIES:
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, two of which are extinct. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:

1.The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is the most common subspecies of tiger and is found primarily in India and Bangladesh.^[20] It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves.




2.The Indochinese Tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam.
These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers.Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions.
Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. All existing populations are at extreme risk from poaching, prey depletion as a result of poaching of primary prey species such as deer and wild pigs, habitat fragmentation and inbreeding.

3.The Malayan Tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004.Recent counts showed there are 600–800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies.




4.The Sumatran Tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered.
it is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100–140 kg (220–310 lb) and females 75–110 kg (170–240 lb).Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey.




5.The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected.the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes.







6.The South China Tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered animals in the world.








7.The Bali Tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali.These tigers were hunted to extinction—the last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female.

8.The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards. The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s.the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger.

^9.Caspian Tiger (formerly Panthera tigris virgata), also known as the Persian tiger or Turanian tiger was the westernmost population of Siberian tiger, found in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan until it apparently became extinct in the late 1950s, though there have been several alleged more recent sightings of the tiger.