Caspian tiger
| Caspian tiger | ||||||||||||
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Caspian tiger in 1899 in the Berlin Zoological Garden |
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| Panthera tigris virgata | ||||||||||||
| ( Illiger , 1815) |
The Caspian tiger ( Panthera tigris virgata ), also known as the Kaspi tiger , Turantiger or Hyrkanischer Tiger , is an extinct subspecies of the tiger that inhabited the forests and river valleys west and east of the Caspian Sea , from Turkey and up until the 1970s Iran across Central Asia to the Takla Makan desert in Xinjiang , China .
The Caspian tiger, along with the Siberian tiger and the Bengal tiger, were among the largest living cats . According to genetic studies, the Caspian tiger is closely related to the Siberian tiger or even assigned to the same subspecies. On this basis, Siberian tiger reintroduction programs in Central Asia are being considered.
features
anatomy
The Caspian tiger was less massive in physique than the Siberian tiger. Male tigers weighed up to 240 kg, were about 270 cm long with a head-torso length of 178–197 cm; their skulls measured 297-365.8 mm. Female Caspian tigers were, as with all subspecies of the tiger, smaller and weighed 85–135 kg and reached a size of 160–180 cm with a head-torso length of 150–165 cm; their skulls measured 195.7-255.5 mm.
Fur and coloring
Compared to the Indian tiger, the Caspian tiger had narrower, longer and even more narrowly distributed dark stripes. These stripes were lighter than in all other subspecies. The fur was long and dense, with the winter fur being significantly longer-haired. Not only was the longer hair on the neck (40 to 120 mm) and on the back (27 to 40 mm) noticeable, but in particular the peritoneum was very long at 60 and 110 mm and formed a "belly mane". The whiskers were also very pronounced in this subspecies. Here the fur length of the hair was 70 to 140 mm. In comparison, the hair length of the whiskers of a Sumatran tiger is 80 to 120 mm.
Phylogenetic relationship to the Siberian tiger
Genetic researchers collected tissue samples from 23 Caspian tigers kept in museums and sequenced at least a segment of five mitochondrial genes . The tests showed that the mitochondrial DNA of P. t. virgata has a low variance compared to P. t. altaica and the two subspecies are very similar. The researchers concluded that the Siberian tiger is genetically the closest relative of the Caspian tiger. According to phylogeographic analyzes, about 10,000 years ago the ancestors of the two subspecies settled from eastern China to Central Asia via the Silk Road to Anatolia and Siberia to the Russian Far East . The presumably formerly contiguous population was probably only separated by human activity around 200 years ago.
distribution and habitat
Historical records show that the distribution of Caspian tigers in the Caspian Sea area was not continuous, but rather interrupted and restricted to watercourses, river valleys and lake shores. In the 19th century they lived:
- in the extreme southwest of the Caucasus in the forests of the hills and plains of the Talysh Mountains and in the Lenkoran lowlands , in the lowlands of Prishib, from where they migrated to the eastern plains of Transcaucasia , and in the Zangezur mountain range in northwestern Iran ;
- in Central Asia in southwest Turkmenistan along the Atrek River and its tributaries Sumbar and Chandyr ; in the west and south-west of the Kopet-Dag mountain range; around Ashgabat in the northern foothills; in Afghanistan along the upper reaches of the Hari Rud river near Herat and along the primeval forests in the area of its lower reaches; in the region around Tejen and Murgab , along the rivers Kuschka and Kaschan ; in the Amu Darya delta to the Aral Sea ; along the Syr Darja , in the Fergana Valley to Tashkent and in the western foothills of the Talas-Alatau ; along the entire coast of the Aral Sea; along the Tschüi and Ili rivers ; along the southern coast of Lake Balkhash and in the north to the southern foothills of the Altai Mountains.
Their former range corresponds roughly to the range of ungulates in the region. Wild boars were the numerically dominant ungulates that were found in forests, along waterways, in reed beds and in thick undergrowth in the areas around the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea. Where watercourses penetrated deep into desert areas , suitable habitats for wild boars and tigers were often linear and only a few kilometers wide. Roe deer and red deer were found in the forests around the Black Sea and in a narrow wooded strip to the west and south of the Caspian Sea. Roe deer also occurred in the wooded areas south of Lake Balkhash. Bukhara deer were found in a narrow, forested area on the southern coast of the Aral Sea and along the Syrdarya and Amudarya rivers.
Way of life
There is no data available on the size of the Caspian Tiger territories. They had to wander far and wide in search of prey, following ungulates from one pasture to another. Wild boars and deer formed the basis of their diet. In many areas of Central Asia, buckara deer and roe deer were important prey alongside wild boar. Sometimes they also hunted Caucasian red deer, goitered gazelles in Iran, jackals , reed cats , migratory locusts and small mammals on the lower reaches of the Amu Darya , saiga antelopes , wild horses , wild asses and argali in the areas of Zhana-Darya and around the Aral Sea, isubrah deer and elk in the area of Lake Baikal . They chased herds of draft animals such as reindeer and caught fish in flooded areas and irrigation canals. In winter they also attacked dogs and cattle that had moved away from his herd. They preferred to drink water from rivers and only from lakes when the water was not brackish.
extermination
The Caspian Tiger extinction began with the Russian colonization of Turkestan in the late 19th century. Their eradication was a process intensified by several circumstances:
- They were ruthlessly pursued by large hunting parties and army personnel who hunted wild boars and tigers with unrestrained devotion.
- The extensive reed beds in the tiger habitat were increasingly being converted into areas for planting cotton and other crops that thrived in the fertile mud along the rivers.
- Swine fever , foot-and-mouth disease and catastrophes such as floods and fire caused many wild boars to perish in a short period of time.
- Tigers were endangered due to their limited distribution, as they lived confined to watercourses in extensive desert areas.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian army was used to hunt predators in forest areas, in the vicinity of settlements and potential agricultural land . Up until World War I , around 50 tigers were shot every year in the forests around the Amu Darya and Pyanj rivers alone . Large bonuses were paid for tiger skins until 1929. Numerous wild boars and deer were killed by the growing population along the rivers, the areas were increasingly deforested, while agricultural development continued. By 1910, about a fifth of the arable land of Turkestan was planted with cotton, about half of it in the Fergana Valley. When there were hardly any tigers left in the valleys, farmers settled the land. The tigers withdrew, first from the lowlands of the river valleys into the swamps around larger rivers. Finally they fled into the forests of the mountains.
The last Caspian tigers
In 1887, the only recorded tiger in Iraq was shot near Mosul . In the Caucasus, the last known tiger was shot near Tbilisi in 1922 after attacking cattle. In the 1920s, tigers also disappeared from the Tarim River basin in Xinjiang , China.
In their last refuge in the region of Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan , the last tiger was seen in 1948 around the Ili River. In Turkmenistan , the last tiger was shot in January 1954 in the valley of the Sumbar River in the Kopet-Dag Mountains. One of the last tigers was shot in 1953 in Iran's Golestān province ; In 1958 another tiger was sighted in this area.
In the Tian Shan Mountains west of Ürümqi in China, the last tiger disappeared from the Manasi River area in the 1960s. The last unconfirmed observation of a tiger in the vicinity of the Aral Sea took place in 1968 on the lower reaches of the Amu Darya near Nukus . In the early 1970s, tigers disappeared from the lower reaches of the Amu Darya and from the Pyzandh Valley in the border area between Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
In 1970 a tiger was allegedly killed near Uludere in the Hakkâri province of Turkey. In Turkey, polls using questionnaires found that between one and eight tigers were killed in the east of the country by the 1980s and tigers likely survived into the early 1990s. But due to lack of interest and for safety reasons, no field studies have been carried out in this region.
Final efforts to protect Caspian tigers
In 1938, the Tigrowaya Balka Nature Reserve opened the first nature reserve in Tajikistan . The area was named after a balka - a dry river channel - after a tiger attacked two officers of the Russian army who were riding through the channel. Tigrowaja Balka is located in the lower reaches of the Wachsch near the border with Afghanistan. A few tigers lived there until around 1950, and the last tiger tracks were found in 1953. A few tigers survived in the area around the reserve, for example on the Pyanj and Amudarya, apparently even into the late 1960s.
Tigers were protected in the Soviet Union since 1947 .
In Iran, Caspian tigers have been protected since 1957; shooting them was punishable by heavy fines. In the early 1970s, biologists from the Iranian Environmental Protection Agency searched for tigers in uninhabited areas of the Caspian forests for several years, but found no evidence of their survival.
The biologist Vratislav Mazák estimated in 1979 that individual animals could only have survived in southeast Turkey and on the Soviet-Afghan border.
Unconfirmed sightings
Extinction is considered certain, even if there have been reports of unconfirmed sightings. No specimens of the Caspian tiger have survived in captivity, so that only a few photographs, a few furs and a few prepared specimens remain. Very optimistic sources state that a Caspian tiger was shot in northern Afghanistan in 1997. The last unconfirmed sighting of a (young) Caspian tiger came from Kazakhstan from the delta of Lake Balkhash in 2006. Other, likewise unconfirmed sightings date back to the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989. These sightings were mostly reported by Soviet soldiers who were deployed in northern Afghanistan.
A small population of Caspian tigers is said to have lived in the Golestan National Park in Iran as early as the 1980s. But even this information is not certain and is based on oral statements from residents there. However, the lack of scientifically confirmed sightings and unequivocal evidence leaves little room for any other interpretation than that the Caspian tiger is extinct. Some experts from the Iran Department of Environment (IDOE) , the Iranian Ministry of the Environment, apparently assume that there is little chance that small populations will survive in the Aliabad area on the border with Turkmenistan and in the southeastern coast near the Caspian Sea in the Parvar reserve to have. According to the IDOE, footprints measuring 12 cm (length) by 14.5 cm (width) were discovered there. Such an imprint size usually exceeds the leopards that are also native there . However, they could have come from a particularly large leopard. Leopard tracks are more often misinterpreted than tiger tracks.
Postures in zoos
Caspian tigers were only sporadically represented in zoos, almost certainly in a few specimens in zoos of the former Soviet Union or European Eastern Bloc countries . Around 1899, two Caspian tigers lived in the Berlin zoo (see photo above), and cat researcher Paul Leyhausen mentions an animal that the Frankfurt zoo kept in the 1940s. The Hamburg zoo Hagenbeck received a copy as a gift from the Persian Shah on January 29, 1955 , which lived there until August 3, 1960.
Creation of the Caspian Tiger
It is believed that the tiger evolved from the Siberian tiger and then advanced south. It is possible that it first reached India and from there penetrated to Western Asia, where the Caspian subspecies developed. It was geographically separated from the Indian subspecies, the king tiger , by desert areas .
Another theory assumes that, unlike the Bengal tiger, which conquered the Indian subcontinent south of the Himalayas to the west, the Caspian tiger migrated north of the Himalayas to the west. This created a natural barrier (the Central Asian high mountains), and two different subspecies developed.
This second assumption has recently been supported by genetic studies that have revealed a very close relationship between Caspian and Siberian tigers . According to this, it is most likely that the tiger immigrated from China along the later Silk Road to Central and Western Asia less than 10,000 years ago and only later spread through southern Siberia to the far east of today's Siberia, where the big cat can still be found today . Until 200 years ago, the distribution area between the Siberian and Caspian populations was still completely contiguous. The huge area seems to have been divided into two separate areas only by recent human influences, in which on the one hand the Caspian tiger and on the other hand the Siberian tiger were distinguished.
It is also conceivable that there could have been isolated encounters between the Indian and Caspian subspecies in today's Pakistan .
Reintroduction of the tiger in Central Asia
Approximate DNA equivalence to the Siberian tiger
In 2009 the great genetic similarity of the Caspian tiger to the Siberian tiger was scientifically proven. According to these results, the DNA strands of both subspecies are almost identical. This result has been scientifically proven and based on DNA samples taken from the skins of Caspian tigers and compared with those of Siberian tigers. According to these studies, these two subspecies once formed a cohesive population of the tiger that was only separated by human influence.
Concrete projects
Efforts are being made to reintroduce the Siberian tiger to dedicated areas in Kazakhstan and Iran , thereby reactivating former habitats. A possible distribution area has been identified in the area of the Ili Delta on Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan . According to the Kazakh government, this should be designated as a reserve for tigers. Another habitat would be designated regions in the Golestan National Park in Iran. For this purpose, Siberian tigers were brought to Iran, where they currently live in the Tehran Zoo . Irritations arose after a male tiger died in the Tehran Zoo just a short time after his arrival. Those responsible in the countries involved blamed each other for the death of the tiger. The progress of the project in Iran is uncertain. The only cause for hope is the resettlement in Kazakhstan. The project is based on a scientific feasibility study. The aforementioned delta of the Ili on the southern Lake Balkhash and the delta of the Amu Darya in particular are selected. On September 8, 2017, the resettlement project was publicly presented by the Kazakh state. Kazakhstan's project partner is the WWF . The resettlement on the southwestern Lake Balkhash is planned.
The Caspian Tiger in the Roman arenas
Caspian tigers were used alongside the Bengal tiger in Roman amphitheaters . The first tiger to fight in Rome was a gift from an Indian ambassador to the Roman emperor Augustus in 19 BC. BC Tigers were imported from the Caucasus , Anatolia , Mesopotamia and Persia and fought in the Roman arenas against gladiators and other animals such as the aurochs and Berber lions .
The Caspian tiger was considered particularly cruel. So accused Virgil of Dido Aeneas , who left her:
- “Not from Dardanos ' tribe; from the rocks staring at the Caucasus
- Are you created. You were nourished by the milk of Hyrcanic tigers. "
literature
- Vratislav Mazák : The tiger. A. Ziemsen Verlag, Wittenberg Lutherstadt, GDR, 1983.
Web links
- Brief profile of the Caspian Tiger; IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group in English
- The Tiger Foundation: Tiger Facts: Caspian Tiger
- Tiger Territory: The Caspian Tiger
- The Extinction Website: Caspian Tiger
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jackson, P., Nowell, K. (2008). "Panthera tigris ssp. Virgata" . IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2011.1. International Union for Conservation of Nature .
- ^ Mazák, V. (1981) Panthera tigris. ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 1.05 MB) Mammalian Species 152: 1-8.
- ^ CA Driscoll et al .: A postulate for tiger recovery: the case of the Caspian Tiger. In: Journal of Threatened Taxa. Volume 4, No. 6, June 2012, pp. 2637–2643, PDF ( Memento of the original dated November 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i V. G. Geptner, AA Sludskii (1972) Mlekopitaiuščie Sovetskogo Soiuza. Vysšaia Škola, Moskva. (Original in Russian; English translation: VG Heptner et al. (1992) Mammals of the Soviet Union. Volume II, Part 2: Carnivora (Hyaenas and Cats). Smithsonian Institute and the National Science Foundation, Washington DC). Pages 95-202.
- ↑ a b c C. A. Driscoll, N. Yamaguchi, GK Bar-Gal, AL Roca, S. Luo, DW Macdonald, SJ O'Brien: Mitochondrial phylogeography illuminates the origin of the extinct Caspian Tiger and its relationship to the Amur Tiger . In: PLoS ONE . Volume 4, No. 1, 2009, e4125.
- ^ A b Sunquist, M., Karanth, KU, Sunquist, F. (1999) Ecology, behavior and resilience of the tiger and its conservation needs . In Seidensticker, J., Christie, S. Jackson, P. (eds.) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes. Cambridge University Press, UK. Pages 5-18.
- ↑ a b c d Jungius, H., Chikin, Y., Tsaruk, O., Pereladova, O. (2009) Pre-Feasibility Study on the Possible Restoration of the Caspian Tiger in the Amu Darya Delta ( Memento of the original from 22 October 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 4.96 MB). WWF Russia
- ^ A b Johnson, P. (1991) The birth of the Modern World Society, 1815-1830. HarperCollins Publishers, New York. ISBN 006016574X
- ^ Brower, DR (2003) Turkestan and the fate of the Russian Empire . Routledge, London. ISBN 0415297443 .
- ↑ a b Dybas, CL (2010) The Once and Future Tiger . BioScience 60 (11): 872-877.
- ↑ Kock, D. (1990) Historical record of a tiger, Panthera tigris (Linnaeus, 1758), in Iraq . Zoology in the Middle East (4): 11-15
- ^ Ognev, SI (1935) Mammals of the USSR and adjacent countries . Volume 2: Carnivora (Fissipedia). Published for the National Science Foundation, Washington DC by the Israel Program, Jerusalem, 1962.
- ^ Ministry of Forest of Turkmenistan SSR. (1985) The Red Data Book of Turkmenistan (in 2 volumes). Published under the State Committee of USSR , Moscow.
- ^ A b Firouz, E. (2005) The complete fauna of Iran . IBTauris
- ↑ Üstay, AH (1990) Hunting in Turkey . BBA, Istanbul.
- ↑ Can, OE (2004) Status, Conservation and Management of Large Carnivores in Turkey . Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France.
- ^ Vratislav Mazak: The tiger . Reprint of the 3rd edition from 1983. Westarp Sciences Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3-89432-759-6
- ↑ Iran Department of Environment (eng.) ( Memento of the original dated February 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The Tiger Foundation (or use sitemap to Caspian Tiger) (eng.)
- ↑ "Rianovosti" press release, March 25, 2011
- ↑ See "The Amur Program"
- ↑ Press release "The Voice of Russia", January 3, 2011 ( Memento of the original from June 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Hartmut Jungius (2010). Feasibility Study on the Possible Restoration of the Caspian Tiger in Central Asia ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . WWF
- ^ WWF: Bringing tigers back home to Kazakhstan . Accessed October 10, 2017.
- ↑ Judith Schalansky literarily describes such a struggle in a chapter of her 2018 book Directory of Some Losses .
- ↑ Publius Vergilius Maro, Aeneis IV, verse 365 f.
