01 Mark a range
Scrapes and spray advertise a solitary territory.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed69
Intelligence76
Range37
Resilience14
Cultural impact94
Ecological role82
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
How many wild tigers are left?
Global estimates in the 2020s sit near 4,000-5,500 depending on the year and method. India holds the majority. The number is a camera-trap product, not a Victorian hunter tale.
Did Project Tiger work?
India wild counts rose from a 1970s crisis to the largest national population. Methods changed (pugmarks to cameras), so the graph is not a single instrument. Southeast Asia did not copy the rebound.
What was Tx2?
A 2010 pledge by tiger-range states in St Petersburg to double wild numbers by 2022. Some countries gained; others lost. The slogan outlived the deadline.
Why not score tigers and lions the same?
Lions are Vulnerable with a wider African footprint and a tiny Gir relic. Tigers are Endangered, more forest-bound, and culturally heavier in South and East Asia. Scores stay relative across all 24 types.
Who was Jim Corbett in this story?
A hunter of man-eaters who wrote Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944) and later lent his name to India first national park -- a colonial-to-reserve arc.
Are Siberian tigers a separate conservation?
Panthera tigris tigris now lumps many mainland tigers in some taxonomies; Amur animals still have a Russian-Chinese border programme and a different prey winter.
IUCN: Endangered
Operating a tiger life is a loop: sense, decide, act, and stay inside an energy and legal envelope.
Steps are type-level -- hunt, migrate or spawn -- not a promise that every individual follows the same film sequence.
Principles
Energy in, work out
Sit-and-ambush on chital, sambar, wild pig and, in the Amur, deer and boar. A large kill funds days; livestock is the conflict calorie.
Information before motion
Night vision and hearing in closed forest. Stripes break outline more than they advertise.
Replacement rate
Slow breeders (whales, apes, albatrosses, tigers) cannot outrun a short political cycle. Fast clutch species still fail if the nest site vanishes.
Place is part of the phenotype
A tiger without its lake, ice, anemone or gravel is a different, usually failing, animal.
Human systems are now habitat
Quotas, feeders, reserves and films rewrite survival as much as weather. A few thousand animals, shrinking SE Asian forest, and a prey base that snares erase. High cultural impact does not raise resilience.
Diagrams
Tiger forage / hunt loop
Tracksense
Stalkmove
Killact
Guardhandle
Raiseinvest
Disperseleave
Tiger life-cycle loop
Birthstart
Weangrow
Learnmove
Disperselearn
Breedbreed
Senescenceend
Life-cycle steps
02 Ambush from cover
A short rush, not a lion-style group run.
03 Kill and drag
Throat or nape bite; drag to cover.
04 Guard the carcass
Days of return; cubs learn on the remains.
05 Raise a litter
18-month dependence -- a slow replacement rate.
06 Disperse or die
Subadults hit roads, snares and other tigers.
Hard limits
Physiological envelope
A few thousand animals, shrinking SE Asian forest, and a prey base that snares erase. High cultural impact does not raise resilience.
Place dependence
Without the breeding site or forage pulse, brochure behaviour is theoretical.
Human and legal limits
Quotas, listings and trade rules now bound real populations as tightly as weather.
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