Indochina tiger description

Indochina tiger, whose photo is in front of you, is named after the naturalist from England Jim Corbett. In Latin, the name of the striped handsome man sounds like Corbetti. Unfortunately, for today this animal has appeared on the verge of disappearance. In Vietnam, local residents were confident that the tiger of Corbett is endowed with the ability to transform into a human being.

Indochina tiger: description

Indo-Chinese tigers can not boast of huge sizes. In this regard, they are inferior to the Amur and Bengal subspecies. The body of an Indo-Chinese handsome man is elongated, very flexible and muscular. In length it reaches 2.4-2.9 m, average weight 110-190 kg, although there are "boys" weighing up to 250 kg. Females are much smaller than males.

The head is round with small ears. The forehead is convex, there are 30 teeth, the upper canines are very large. Predator with his tongue is able to rip off the skin from meat and meat from the bones of prey. The point is that there are sharp bumps in the tongue.

The tail is long, extremely mobile. The forelimbs are more powerful than the hind legs. On the claws are the retractable claws.

The main background color can be from red-orange to the color of dark ocher. There are, of course, black narrow stripes, in some cases they take the form of spots. There are no strips or spots on the front paws. There is a white color on the throat, belly, cheeks and inner side of the paws.

Habitat

The Indo-Chinese tiger is a subspecies that lives in Southeast Asia. In natural conditions it can be found in Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Indochina tiger: a way of life

Tiger Corbett is an extremely secretive and solitary animal. It is very difficult for zoologists to collect data on it, so the way of life of the Indo-Chinese tigers has not been fully studied to this day. In a natural environment, these predators live up to 16-18 years, in captivity - up to 24-26 years.

The Indochinese tiger prefers living on the banks of the Salween and Mekong rivers, in dry tropical and subtropical moist forests, on hilly and mountainous terrains.

A striped predator is hunting, mostly for large game. His menu consists of: bulls, deer, wild pigs ... If you can not catch such game, the tiger enjoys with pleasure a monkey, porcupine, birds, fish or reptiles. Sometimes, for want of a better option, the beast can eat carrion.

This beautiful powerful animal has the same powerful voice. The tiger can growl, meow, hiss ... The range of sounds issued is very wide.

Predator Character

Indochina tiger is a predator who hunts at night or at dusk. Extraction lies in ambush, but you can not be lucky, as only one attempt out of ten becomes effective. In the afternoon he prefers to lie back in the shade. Water is not afraid, on the contrary, in hot dachshunds likes to swim.

Indochina tiger has sharp eyesight and excellent hearing. With olfaction, things are much worse. Vibrissae serve as the organ of touch for the beast . Compared to other tiger species, Corbett is considered not high, but the striped animal is very strong. Sluggish it can not be called, it can develop speed up to 70km / hour. And go for a night long distances. The jump of this handsome man is 10 meters.

As mentioned earlier, the Indo-Chinese tiger lives alone. Females are only forced to spend most of their life growing offspring. The males do not take part in this. Each predator has its own territory, the boundaries of which it marks with scrapes on trees and urine. The male takes a much larger area than the female. His possessions are partly overlapped by areas of females. Each animal fiercely defends its "home", not allowing the invasion of the occupied territory of other tigers.

The striped predator loves to move about the possessions through abandoned paths, overgrown with young trees and bushes, which people laid during the harvesting of the tree.

Marriage period

When the mating season comes, males mate with female neighbors, those whose possessions border on the tiger's possessions. There are no specific dates for mating these predators, reproduction takes place throughout the year, but the preferred time for mating striped handsome men is winter.

Sexually mature animals are considered from 3-5 years old, "girls" are earlier. When the tigress begins estrus, she marks the boundaries of her possessions with urine. Thus, males - neighbors immediately know that she is ready for marriage. If the female liked at once several knights, then they, in order to achieve the favor of the chosen one, arrange fights among themselves. One female can mate with several males, her cubs will then be from different fathers.

The mating season lasts about 6-8 days. All this time, the male and female live together, hunt together and sleep side-by-side, mating for dozens of times during the day.

Offspring

The female leads the offspring once every two years. In his belly, the young bear about 96-113 days. During pregnancy, a tigress looks after a safe, hard-to-reach place for a lair, and birth takes place there.

In one litter there are 2-3 helpless kittens. The cubs are born blind and deaf. It is sad to note the fact that 35% of the cubs die without noticing even the first year of life.

Approximately 7 days after birth, the striped babies begin to see clearly. The teeth (milk) begin to grow by the age of two weeks, the permanent fangs grow to a year. Lactation of the nursing female lasts up to six months, but already at 2 months the cubs begin to taste meat.

From six months old, the mother begins to teach the young to hunt for small prey. At the age of eight months, young tigers accompany a tigress-mum on a hunt. This continues until they are one and a half years old. At this age, the "boys" leave their own lair and enter an adult independent life. "Girls" stay with their parents much longer (20-28 months).

Population

Indochina tiger is listed in the Red Book. In the wild, to date, about 1600 individuals of this species live. The zoos contain about 60 tigers. These animals are on the brink of extinction. They were hunted for teeth, claws and skins. Also healers of Chinese medicine used internal organs that have healing properties. It was for the sake of the insides in Vietnam that three-quarters of the tigers were exterminated. The largest number of Indochinese striped handsome dwellers in Malaysia. In this country, poaching is fought with the most severe methods. Studies have shown that it is because of poachers that the animal population is falling too fast. Approximately every 7 days from this one Corbett tiger perishes.

The main factors that affect the decline in the number of Indochinese tigers: deforestation, poaching, cultivation of the oil palm, depletion of the forage reserve, fragmentation of the range, inbreeding. People should think about urgently needing to protect these beautiful predators.