Information about tigers

Tiger is a general term for tigers, and its English name is Tiger. There is only one species in science-Siberian tiger. Its taxonomic status in the animal kingdom belongs to Chordata, Vertebrate, Mammalia, Carnivora, Cat and Leopard. Other animals belonging to tigers are lions, leopards, snow leopards and jaguars.

Tigers are unique to Asia. Fossils prove that tigers have lived on the earth for at least 2 million years. China is the hometown of tigers, and the South China tiger is the direct descendant of the original tiger in its birthplace. 165438+ The tiger fossils unearthed in Gongwangling, Lantian, Shaanxi, millions of years ago are closely related to the ancient Lantian human skull, one of human ancestors. Therefore, tigers lived with humans at least 654.38 billion years ago.

Tigers originated in China and gradually spread around in the evolutionary history of millions of years, but they have never been able to cross the Arabian desert to Africa or cross the Caucasus mountains to enter Europe, so they have always stayed in Asia for development and reproduction. In the process of spreading, staying and evolving to other parts of Asia, the local tiger groups with certain differences in size, color stripes, living habits and reproductive characteristics gradually evolved into subspecies, adapting to their respective climate, living environment and prey composition.

In 1968, Vladimir Mazak divided tigers into eight subspecies according to their weight, body color and markings. At present, this classification is accepted by most scholars. The geographical distribution or distribution of these eight subspecies is as follows:

Page (abbreviation of page) distributed in t. balica, Bali, Indonesia, became extinct in 1930s.

The Java tiger (P. t. sondaica) distributed in Jagway Island, Indonesia became extinct in 1980s.

T. virgata, whose pages (abbreviation for page) are distributed from Turkey to Central Asia and West Asia, became extinct in 1970s.

The Bengal tiger (P. t. tigris) is distributed in the Indian subcontinent, including western Myanmar. China also has a small distribution.

Indian zhina tiger (P. t. corbetti), also known as Southeast Asian tiger, is distributed in the Southeast Asian continent and eastern Myanmar. China also has a small distribution.

The South China Tiger (P. t. amoyensis) is distributed in south-central China, also known as the South China Tiger.

The Sumatra tiger (P.T. Sumatra) is distributed in Sumatra Island, Indonesia.

The Northeast Tiger (P. t. altaica), also known as the Northeast Tiger and the Northeast Tiger, is distributed in Wusuli River in Russia, Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces in China and North Korea.

At present, China is the only country with four tiger subspecies.

In 2004, Luo and his collaborators at home and abroad, through the systematic analysis of the geography, population structure and genetic origin of tigers, thought that the existing tigers could be divided into six populations instead of the original five, and re-divided a Malay tiger (P. t. jacksoni) from the original Indo-Chinese tiger. Such a * * *, there are nine tiger subspecies. The results of this study have not been accepted by zoologists.