Subspecies
The first description of the tiger has been made by Linnaeus in 1758 in his book Systema Naturae. The species Panthera tigris traditionally included eight different subspecies, but in 2004 a study on three different genetic markers from 130 tigers found a new subspecies, the Tiger of Malaya (Panthera tigris jacksoni) The classification in nine sub-species has been adopted by IUCN in 2008 and by foundations to protect the tiger as Save the Tiger Fund and 21st Century Tiger Moreover, we note that the IUCN has made a change of author for the species (from Linnaeus to Mazak) The database NCBI recognizes that for its six subspecies alive and that of ITIS remains the model for eight sub-species The research on sub-species of tigers will continue to develop plans to safeguard the most appropriate possible
The nine sub-species presented here are those recognized by the IUCN, among them there are three subspecies extinct:
- The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is the largest tigers. Her dress is white with stripes of darker than black. Males often have a thick collar of white fur around the neck. Populations extend on Manchuria, north-eastern China, the Russian and perhaps North Korea;
- the South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis) is relatively compact size, its stripes are widely spaced, short and wide. Sub-species in critical danger of extinction, are the latest Chinese tigers in a reserve in southern China. He was declared "harmful" by Mao Zedong that precipitated its decline. The Chinese government is now trying to save the remaining specimens;
- The Bali tiger (Panthera tigris Balice), like the Sumatran tiger, was mostly unknown at the time of his disappearance in the early 1930s. We did not find that on the island of Bali;
- the Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti) is small enough, her dress is dark, with stripes of finer and more numerous than the Bengal tiger. White markings are more pronounced. Its range covers the Thailand but also southern China, the Cambodia on Myanmar, the Laos, the Viet Nam;
- the Malaysian tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni) is a subspecies described in 2004, it looks like the Indochinese tiger and lives in Malaysia;
- the Java tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) is a subspecies extinct, the last tiger was spotted Java in 1972 and it has probably disappeared in the 1980s, following the destruction of its habitat due to intensive exploitation of Wood Teak It was like the Sumatran tiger and is found only on the island of Java;
- The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is the smallest subspecies of tiger alive The color is very dark, the white of the abdomen is smaller, and the stripes are double, thin and tight. Males have the distinction of having a thick fur collar around the neck. It is only present on the island of Sumatra;
- the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) has enough spaced stripes on brown orange. It is found mainly in India but also Bangladesh, in Bhutan, in Nepal, west of Myanmar and southern China. This is the subspecies most common;
- the Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) is a subspecies extinct in the 1970s. This tiger was fairly large, with a white belly and his head had a long collar. The territories of the Caspian tiger lay on the Afghanistan, the Iran, the Turkish, the Mongolian, and center of Russia.