International Tiger Day and 10 Facts about the beautiful beasts!
The iconic big, colourful cats with their big stripes! See below for some interesting information about them including 10 facts!
Today on the 29th July is International Tiger Day, a great day to celebrate these beautiful creatures! However, today, they are almost extinct as there are only few as 3 200 know tigers left in the wild and have been restrict to such a small area in isolated forests.
For the last hundred years the tiger population has dropped by 95%! This is due to the destruction of forests and also poaching. Even though there has been a area constructed to protect tigers in Indonesia called Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, but unfortunately people are still taking the land back to grow coffee and other plantations.
The 10 Facts
- White tigers are the most well-known subtype of tiger. However they only are born when tigers carry a rare gene, which is so rare it only occurs once every 10,000 births!
- There are six main species of tigers living in the wild today: Siberian tigers, Bengal tigers, Indochinese tigers, Malayan tigers, Sumatran tigers and South China tigers.
- It is estimated that tigers have lost 93% of their natural habitat. Climate change is now becoming a a major threat, and rising sea levels threatening to wipe out even more of their habitat.
- When you look are tigers stripes they are like human finger prints, each one is different, with tigers having more than a hundred!
- Where other cats like lions, hunt in packs: tigers hunt alone! Which has helped them develop thicker, sharper teeth!
- This is not very nice fact as it says how tigers kill! Tigers ambush their prey and knock it off its balance. Once down, the tiger will bite the back of its prey’s neck, breaking the spinal cord, then the tiger uses it’s paws to hold onto the prey and stays attached to the creature’s neck until it is dead. Yuck!
- Unlike other species of cat, tigers like water and are good swimmers. They often cool off in rivers and hunt in the water. They are known to jump onto fishing boats to search for food!
- Tigers can jump 5 metres high from just standing! With them able to jump further vertically!
- Pregnancies last for around 100 days and normally between three and four cubs are born. Then female tigers will look after the cubs alone and they are kept in a den for about eight weeks.
- Cubs become independent at about 1 and half years. However, they do not leave their mother until they are about 2 and a half years old, and cubs reach sexual maturity at 4. In captivity, tigers can live up to 26, but in the wild their life expectancy is just 10!
They may not be tigers, but have a look at what cats we have at Voyage Fair Trade!
