Tiger Facts

A tiger's stripes are unique to each individual, like a fingerprint, and they grow from pigment in the skin itself — a shaved tiger still shows its pattern. Against tall grass and dappled forest light those dark vertical bars break up the cat's large outline, which is the whole point of an ambush hunter's camouflage. Behind the coat is a body built for a short, overwhelming attack rather than a chase: heavy muscle, a powerful skull and jaw for a throat-clamping bite, retractable claws for grappling, and a reflective tapetum lucidum that gives night vision roughly six times better than a human's. Size varies widely by population — large Amur tigers can reach about 10 feet and 660 pounds, while Sumatran tigers may be around 220 pounds. Unusually for a cat, tigers are strong swimmers with slight webbing between the toes and often cool off in water.

Tigers once ranged from the Caucasus to the Indonesian islands; today they hold only about 7% of that former range, in scattered pockets across India (with most of the world's wild tigers), Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, China, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. They are adaptable wherever there is cover, water, and large prey, occupying snowy temperate forest, tropical rainforest, dry grassland, and mangrove swamp alike. In parts of South Asia the same forest-and-grassland mosaic supports ground birds such as the peacock.

Tigers are obligate carnivores that specialise in large hoofed prey — deer such as sambar and chital, wild pigs, and big bovines like water buffalo and gaur — and a large tiger can eat up to 88 pounds (40 kg) at one sitting. That payoff justifies a patient method: stalking slowly through cover at night to get as close as possible, then a fast rush that can hit 40 mph, wrestling the animal down and killing with a bite to the neck or a suffocating grip on the throat. Even so, most hunts fail — only about one attempt in ten succeeds. The mechanics are broken down in how tigers ambush prey.

Adult tigers are solitary and strongly territorial, each holding a home range sized to local prey density. A male defends his range against rival males but tolerates overlap with resident females. Tigers advertise and patrol their boundaries with scent — sprayed urine, scrape marks, and scratched bark — and with sound: a tiger's low roar can carry more than two miles through forest, signalling ownership and warning off intruders.

Mating is brief, and the male leaves afterward, so the female raises the young alone. After a gestation of about 103 days she bears 2 to 4 blind, helpless cubs in a hidden den, born with blue eyes that later turn gold. She hunts alone while guarding them, and at around eight weeks the cubs begin following her to learn the difficult craft of ambush hunting. They stay with her about two years before dispersing to find their own territory. Wild tigers usually live 10 to 15 years.

The tiger is Endangered and declining. A century ago perhaps 100,000 lived in the wild; today fewer than 4,500 remain. Logging, farming, and infrastructure have fragmented and shrunk their forests, isolating populations and pushing tigers into conflict with people when they take livestock. On top of that, tigers are poached for skins, bones, and other parts sold through illegal markets — a direct, continuing pressure on the small populations that survive.

To learn more about the tiger and global efforts to save this iconic species, consult the following authoritative resources:

• IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: Tiger
• World Wildlife Fund (WWF): Tiger
• National Geographic: Tiger
• Panthera: Tiger Conservation