Evolution of Tigers
Introduction
There exist 37 different species of cats. Cats evolved around 25,000,000 years ago and have been and are some of the most specialized mammals on the earth. The Siberian Tiger is the largest cat in the world. The Snow Tiger is slightly smaller than the Siberian Tiger. In history larger cats have existed, but they were extirpated long time ago.
In general
cats are very alike both in terms of their way of living and their
behavior. They are especially adapted to hunt and kill and eat raw
meat! All predators are adapted to hunting and eating meat and a
special kind of living one could say, but the tigers in general,
including the Snow Tiger, is perhaps more adapted than many other
predators. Humans for example have relatively flat molars that we use
for chewing food.
The White Tiger does not have any molar teeth they only got what one could call cutting teeth that works the same way as a scissors does. In the front of their mouth they have two very large canine teeth. These are very different in size compared to the corresponding teeth seen in humans and approximately 50% larger than the similar teeth seen in polar bears. In conjunction with this piece of information it should be mentioned that the polar bear, in general, is almost twice as big as the Siberian Tiger.
Prey choice
The reason for the exceptionally large canine teeth is of course an evolution towards killing large prey. The Tiger has particular use of its forelimbs when hunting. They have very strong and powerful limbs, large paws and very sharp claws for holding on to their prey.
The main part of the body of the tiger is also adapted to
capturing large prey. The loin of the tiger is very oblong and
relatively stiff compared to a lot of other predators. Its chest is
very flexible and very deep. The muscle that contracts the forelimbs
of the tiger is exceptionally strong.
If you go to the picture section of this webpage you can try to compare the relative size of the muscles used to contract the forelimbs between the tigers in the photo section and the few dogs.
History of Tigers
Historically speaking tigers has inhabitated most of Asia, parts of Russia and the huge areas between the Aral and Caspian Seas. There are eight subspecies of tigers. Unfortunately three of them were eradicated in the last century – the Javan tiger, the Bali tiger and the Caspian tiger.
The different types of tigers or subspecies are usually defined by their body size, the characteristics of their skull and their coloration and striping patterns. This division might prove inadequate compared to DNA analysis since morphological distinctions usually have been based on a few specimens. Research has also revealed, that the variation of some characteristics overlaps between subspecies from time to time making distinctions difficult.
Tigers require quite large land areas for hunting, mating etc. According to both ecological analysis and model predictions of tiger densities, an average density of tigers from 3.2 to 16.8 in 100 km 2 is required for a tiger population to sustain4. This area is closely related to the density of the tigers prey which of course wary from area to area. The requirement of tiger of large land areas in combination with habitat destruction is one of the main reasons why its difficult to uphold thriving populations.
Privacy Policy for natureobservers/snowtiger/: Some third-part advertisers may use cookies and beacons providing them with information about your geographic location, browser etc. You can disable this option in the privacy settings of your web browser. The third party vendor Google uses a DART cookie to serve ads based on the user’s visits to other sites. You can opt out of the Dart cookie at the Google ad and content network.