Sibirian Tiger
| Sibirian Tiger | ||||||||||||
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Siberian tiger (male) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Panthera tigris altaica | ||||||||||||
| Temminck , 1844 |
The Siberian tiger ( Panthera tigris altaica ), also known as the Amur tiger or Ussurite tiger , is a subspecies of the tiger and the largest living cat in the world. The game population today amounts to less than 500 animals living in the Far East of Russia and adjacent areas of North Korea and China. The IUCN lists the subspecies as "critically endangered" ( Endangered ).
features
anatomy
The Siberian tiger is the largest subspecies of the tiger. The head-trunk length is usually up to 200 cm, in exceptional cases up to about 230 cm; the tail length up to approx. 100 cm, the shoulder height up to 105 cm. Thus it is slightly larger than the Bengal tiger, which represents the second largest subspecies of the tiger. Male Siberian tigers weigh between 180 and 306 kg, females 100 to 167 kg.
hide
The hair length of the Siberian tiger is 15 to 17 mm on the back in summer and between 25 and 45 mm on the belly. The neck hair is usually elongated and has a length between 30 and 55 mm. The whiskers measure between 70 and 85 mm and are therefore significantly shorter than those of the smaller Sumatran tiger , for example , which are between 80 and 120 mm long. The winter coat, on the other hand, is significantly longer due to the climatic conditions: the hair on the back is between 40 and 60 mm long, the belly hair is 70 to 105 mm long and the whiskers are 90 to 120 mm long. The hair on the chest and throat are also elongated, so that the big cat has a rather "shaggy" appearance due to the rather long hair.
The Siberian tiger is usually much lighter than the southern tiger subspecies, although the range of hues can vary considerably, and so animals with dark reddish winter fur also occur. The white on the belly and at the beginnings of the flanks is more extensive than in other subspecies, the stripes are often not black everywhere, but often more black-gray or gray-brown. A thick and long fur protects it from the low temperatures that can drop to minus 45 ° C in its home. In summer, however, the fur is much shorter than in winter. Underneath, on the belly and on the flanks, there is a layer of fatty tissue up to five centimeters thick , which also helps him to survive extreme cold.
Way of life
The Siberian tiger is very adaptable and inhabits both deciduous and coniferous forests, flatlands and low mountain ranges in the region. Most of the peaks in the area of today's distribution area are only 500-800 m above sea level and only a few reach heights of more than 1000 meters. The big cat seems to prefer forests with dense vegetation, presumably to be able to sneak up and hide better. The Siberian tiger usually lives solitary and marks its territory with urine and scratch marks. Using the example of a study in the Sichote-Alin nature reserve , the enormous space requirements of the animals become clear. The ranges of the females were between 200 and 400 square kilometers, those of the males 800 to 1000; these mostly overlapped with those of several females. A tomcat shares its territory with two females on average. Occasionally, the hangover territory can be as much as 3,000 square kilometers. Male tigers defend their territory against conspecifics. You concentrate on the important borders to the female territory and places with good prey population. In the best tiger habitats in the Far East, one can find around one tiger per 100 square kilometers.
Siberian tigers are predominantly nocturnal, their life expectancy is between 15 and 20 years.
Food and hunting
The Siberian tiger has to eat 9 to 10 kg of meat per day because it needs enormous energy reserves in order to survive in the cold climate . The main prey animals are red deer , wild boar , sika deer and roe deer , in that order . It also prey on moose , gorals , lynx and occasionally even bears . Sometimes he also kills dogs and domestic animals. In general, prey populations seem to be of much greater importance than certain habitat types .
With its strong body, it can carry very heavy prey over long distances in order to eat or store it in a quiet place.
The tiger spends a lot of time hunting as only 10 percent of its attacks are successful. Such an attack begins with sneaking up on the prey. When the tiger has come close enough, it jumps with one mighty leap onto the victim from behind to knock its canine teeth into the neck of the victim . He stands firmly with his hind legs on the ground to push the animal down. Larger animals are then killed with a throat bite, smaller prey already die from the injuries in the neck.
Reproduction
Since the mating season is year-round, the female signals her readiness to mate by marking urine or scratching trees. Some females even go looking for partners themselves, as the territories are so large and they are only ready to mate for three to seven days. If a female finds a partner during this time, mating occurs several times and the couple stays together for a few days before separating again.
After a gestation period of 95–112 days, the mother gives birth to three to seven cubs. The newborns remain blind for two weeks. After two months they leave their hiding place for the first time and their mother gives them small pieces of meat. However, they are only completely weaned after five to six months and start their first hunting trips. As early as one year of life, they independently hunt for smaller prey. At the age of four they are finally sexually mature and leave their mother to find their own territory.
Distribution and threat to the species
Distribution area
In contrast to its tropical relatives, the Siberian tiger lives in fairly cold climates. The range of this subspecies was once much larger than it is today and reached from Lake Baikal to Korea and Sakhalin . Today it is limited to a narrow stretch of coast on the Sea of Japan in the border area between North Korea, China and Russia. The main area of distribution today is in the Far East of Russia. Its occurrence there extends from north to south over 1000 km through the Primorye region to the southern parts of the Khabarovsk region . In historical times, the tiger in the Amur region never penetrated areas over 50 degrees north latitude. The river Amur forms the maximum western limit of its range today. The total remaining range of Panthera tigris altaica in the Far East of Russia is an estimated 185,000 square kilometers. While most of the tigers live in the Primorsky Krai, 48 to 53 adult tigers roamed the Khabarovsk region, as a study from 1996 showed. The total number of Siberian tigers still living in northeast China and North Korea is unlikely to exceed 20 or 30 animals. In addition, they rarely find sufficiently large forest areas in these areas. According to the International Stud Book kept at Leipzig Zoo, there were a total of 578 Siberian tigers in zoos at the end of 2017.
Persistence and protection
In the case of Siberian tigers - with a catfish territory of around 1600 km² - a population census is extremely difficult. Until 2005, the counting methodology was based on tracks in the snow, which led to many errors. Individuals cannot be differentiated on the basis of the traces, only between adult males, females and young animals can be differentiated. The first census in the 1930s assumed that 20–30 animals remained in Russia. According to the WWF, an elaborate census in 2004 and 2005 resulted in an estimated 431 to 529 specimens, including 334 to 417 adult animals and 97 to 112 young animals. This investigation also took into account the size of the area and the habitats preferred by the species. Other methods such as DNA samples, photo traps, sniffer dogs and hair traps were increasingly used in later investigations. In 2015, WWF and the Russian government published figures on the current inventory. After that, there were 480-540 Siberian tigers in 2015, including an estimated 100 pups
As the tiger bone supplies in China ran out at the end of the 1980s, demand rose sharply. In addition, the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the collapse of law and order in Russia's Far East. As a result, the hunting pressure on the big cat increased sharply in the early 1990s. At that time, protecting tigers was the task of local politicians, which was the reason that hardly any money was available from far-off Moscow. The rangers fought well-organized poaching gangs with outdated equipment. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin began campaigning for the Siberian Tiger in 1993 , and international funds were also made available. It was then that Operation Amba was founded, an anti-poaching brigade made up of mobile units that track down poachers in the forest or track smugglers. As early as August 1994, the amount of bones traded decreased. The press has reported a number of arrests since then. In a large census in 1996, the population had stabilized again at around 430 animals.
In November 2010, an international summit on the protection of threatened tigers, initiated by Vladimir Putin , took place in Saint Petersburg . It was decided "that the 13 countries where the big cats are still living free today want to double the number of tigers by the next" year of the tiger "in 2022 . Poaching is to be prosecuted, smuggling outlawed and controls expanded. "
As early as 1975 CITES had banned the international trade in tiger parts. There has been a general trade ban on tiger products since 1987 and in 1993 Taiwan , China, South Korea and Hong Kong were warned against trading in tiger bones. In 1993, China banned domestic tiger bone trade and in 1995, tiger products were no longer openly sold in Asian markets. Nevertheless, the clandestine trade continued. The Siberian tiger is by IUCN (as "critically endangered" Endangered ) classified. Hunting is banned in Russia, China and Korea.
Dangers that threaten the population
In addition to the loss of natural habitat, the Siberian tiger is particularly threatened by the decline in the large game populations that form its natural food source. Since meat is hardly affordable for many people in the Far East of Russia, a lot is poached in the tiger's habitat.
In addition, poaching on the cat itself is a major threat. As the prices for tiger bones are horrific in the Chinese market, many take the risk of being punished. Especially since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the associated opening of the border, the hunt for big cats has increased significantly. The skins are also still coveted trophies. A major problem in this context is the widespread corruption among local politicians and authorities, which is related to their low incomes. Tigers can often be poached with impunity and smuggled abroad without being noticed.
Siberian tigers usually avoid humans and relatively rarely kill livestock. If they do, they are often younger animals that do not have their own hunting grounds. However, just like Amur leopards , Siberian tigers often tear down farm deer that are kept in large gates. The cats apparently do not differentiate between wild and tame deer. As a result, the owners occasionally kill big cats that they encounter near their farms. More than 60% of transmitter-tagged tiger deaths were caused by humans.
The illegal large-scale logging is one of the main causes for the loss of the tiger habitat. In addition, the generous granting of logging rights to Russian and international corporations causes the clearing of entire forests in the Amur region. The tiger usually avoids the large open cleared areas and it takes years before they are overgrown again. In addition, the seeds of the Korean pine are the basic foodstuff for the wild boar in many areas, on which the tiger is in turn highly dependent. In regions with selective logging, the tigers find a livelihood, but with this method a much larger area is required to harvest the same amount of wood. The many required access roads allow poachers to easily penetrate these forest areas. In many tiger areas, large clearing aisles cut through the primeval forests. The last undestroyed river basins in the Primorye region are the Bikin and Samanga valleys in the north.
Another factor threatening the habitat of the Siberian tiger are forest fires. Artificially lit large fires are supposed to increase the yields in the fields, but unfortunately these often spill over to neighboring forests and thus destroy the habitats of the big cats. In some areas forests have become almost treeless open areas due to repeated burning, which are unsuitable for tigers as hunting grounds. The tiger might even be ecologically capable of adapting to this habitat, but here it represents a very easy target for poachers and for this reason alone avoids such areas. The effects of the fires are particularly significant in the south of the Primorye Region.
literature
- Werner J. Egli: The last fight of the tiger. Novel. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-8000-5154-0 .
- David Macdonald: The Great Encyclopedia of Mammals. Könemann in the Tandem Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-8331-1006-6 .
- Peter Matthiessen : Tiger in the snow. A plea for the Siberian tiger. National Geographic, Goldmann, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-442-71193-2 .
- Vratislav Mazák : The tiger . Reprint of the 3rd edition from 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften, Hohenwarsleben 2004, ISBN 3-89432-759-6 , pp. 156-161.
- Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World . Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 .
- John Seidensticker: Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes. Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-64835-1 .
Web links
- Short profile Siberian tiger; IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group in English
- Extensive private homepage
- wcs.org (English)
- Amurtiger (English)
- Panthera tigris ssp. altaica in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2011. Posted by: Miquelle, D., Darman, Y. & Seryodkin, I., 2010. Accessed January 20, 2014.
Individual evidence
- ^ Vratislav Mazák (1981): Panthera tigris In: Mammalian Species. 152, pp. 1–8 (English)
- ^ Vratislav Mazák : The tiger. Westarp Sciences; Edition: 5 (April 2004), unchanged. 3rd edition from 1983 ISBN 3-89432-759-6 . (P. 178 ff.)
- ↑ a b c Miquelle, Dale & G. PIKUNOV, D & M. DUNISHENKO, Y & V. ARAMILEV, V & G. NIKOLAEV, I & K. ABRAMOV, V & N. SMIRNOV, E & P. SALKINA, G & Seryodkin, Ivan & V. GAPONOV, V & V. FOMENKO, P & N. LITVINOV, M. (2006). A survey of Amur (Siberian) Tigers in the Russian Far East, 2004-2005
- ↑ H. Dou, H. Yang, L. Feng, P. Mou, T. Wang, J. Ge: Estimating the Population Size and Genetic Diversity of Amur Tigers in Northeast China. In: PLOS ONE . Volume 11, number 4, 2016, p. E0154254, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0154254 , PMID 27100387 , PMC 4839643 (free full text).
- ↑ Russia Wildlife Conservation Society: Amur Tiger Surveys and Monitoring
- ^ Siberian Tigers Stable, According to Landmark Survey . News.nationalgeographic.com. October 28, 2010. Retrieved November 23, 2010.
- ↑ Meghan Riley, Sveta Soutyrina, Dale Miquelle, Gregory Hayward, John Goodrich, Steven Buskirk: Comparison of methods for estimating Amur tiger abundance. In: Wildlife Biology. 2017, 2017, p. Wlb.00253, doi : 10.2981 / wlb.00253 .
- ↑ Siberian Times: December 16, 2015: Sex imbalance as endangered Siberian tigers show signs of recovery
- ↑ https://news.mongabay.com: Siberian tiger population is growing
- ↑ Siberian Tiger - Last Hope for the "Ruler of the Taiga" - Knowledge . sueddeutsche.de. November 8, 2010. Retrieved November 23, 2010.