The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - Printable Version +- WildFact (https://wildfact.com/forum) +-- Forum: Information Section (https://wildfact.com/forum/forum-information-section) +--- Forum: Terrestrial Wild Animals (https://wildfact.com/forum/forum-terrestrial-wild-animals) +---- Forum: Wild Cats (https://wildfact.com/forum/forum-wild-cats) +----- Forum: Tiger (https://wildfact.com/forum/forum-tiger) +----- Thread: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) (/topic-the-caspian-tiger-panthera-tigris-virgata) |
RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 10-31-2023 (10-31-2023, 05:26 AM)Balam Wrote:(10-31-2023, 03:35 AM)Wlfelipe86 Wrote:(10-30-2023, 04:39 AM)Matias Wrote:(10-28-2023, 04:01 AM)lfelipe86 Wrote: What calls my attention above everything is the consistency in reported sightings!! I´ve shared a documentary called: "on the trail of the hyrcan tiger" where a shepard tells he saw a tiger in golestan national park. Months ago i spoke to another guy who says he also witnessed a tiger kill a boar also at golestan and that he has friends who work in the park(rangers) that have seen tigers in the area too!! that is just something that can not be ignored!!! Yes, i know that! That is not what i´m saying. What i´m saying is that in my opinion there is not enough effort to get those conclusive evidences!! i know science need DNA, etc... to confirm if it is or not a zanzibar leopard but there is not enough effort to get thoses! Galante himself said that in a interview! That is my point. The same regarding the caspian tigers that may stil be out there!! RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - Matias - 10-31-2023 (10-31-2023, 03:35 AM)lfelipe86 Wrote: I agree with everything that you wrote, however to get confirmation, effort to get those confirmations are needed!! At Zanzibar sightings were been recorded for years and nothing was done, they were always dismissed as not true! Just like caspian tigers, not only in Iran but other places like Afghanistan and Kazakhstan!! It took a foreigner(Galante) to go there and get it on camera!, If it is a viable population or not only more research can tell and again nothing has been done since than or just not enough! Many evidence of tigers have been found and they are dismissed by authorities just like the Zanzibar leopard case!!! For exemple: a few years ago, a tigress with cubs was reported near a village in Kalaleh, the authorities just dismissed it as not true because there has been no reports of tigers by officials in the area, which is again not true, many rangers have reported tigers in Golestan area over the years like i mentioned!! Scats that could have been collected have been reported by locals, pugmarks, etc... , even the iranian department found pugmarks at parvar that were been reported for years! Paul Joslin had found 17cm pugmarks in northern iran way befored those from de iranian department! those are very isolated areas! They get leopards in camera traps, they just need to take them to more isolated areas and follow the sightings! The situations that lead people to claim to have seen an animal, its footprints, feces, its actions, its predations... are much deeper than you can imagine. After Forest Galante published his video on the Animal Planet program, this study was published HERE. I understand that you would like to provide first-hand information, but there are natural checks and balances in situations that require a lot of caution and little passion. A few years after the disappearance of the last western black rhinos (Diceros bicornis longipes) in Cameroon, a team went there to map and, unbelievably, clues were forged by the hired trackers themselves, to perpetuate the idea that some individuals were still in this landscape. Each iconic large animal that has disappeared has a complex network of stories that always bring them back. RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 10-31-2023 (10-26-2023, 06:36 AM)peter Wrote:(10-26-2023, 04:57 AM)lfelipe86 Wrote:(10-25-2023, 04:19 AM)peter Wrote:(10-24-2023, 04:16 PM)lfelipe86 Wrote: I have found this article about Caspian tigers extinction and sightings in Turkey!! It tells about how caspian tigers may have survived long after they were considered officialy extinct!! (10-31-2023, 06:56 AM)Matias Wrote:(10-31-2023, 03:35 AM)lfelipe86 Wrote: I agree with everything that you wrote, however to get confirmation, effort to get those confirmations are needed!! At Zanzibar sightings were been recorded for years and nothing was done, they were always dismissed as not true! Just like caspian tigers, not only in Iran but other places like Afghanistan and Kazakhstan!! It took a foreigner(Galante) to go there and get it on camera!, If it is a viable population or not only more research can tell and again nothing has been done since than or just not enough! Many evidence of tigers have been found and they are dismissed by authorities just like the Zanzibar leopard case!!! For exemple: a few years ago, a tigress with cubs was reported near a village in Kalaleh, the authorities just dismissed it as not true because there has been no reports of tigers by officials in the area, which is again not true, many rangers have reported tigers in Golestan area over the years like i mentioned!! Scats that could have been collected have been reported by locals, pugmarks, etc... , even the iranian department found pugmarks at parvar that were been reported for years! Paul Joslin had found 17cm pugmarks in northern iran way befored those from de iranian department! those are very isolated areas! They get leopards in camera traps, they just need to take them to more isolated areas and follow the sightings! Every case is a case! Unique! My exemples regarding the caspian tigers with papers published by official govenerment offices like the ones from Turkey, or the tigers pugmarks and skats by iranian department can never be compared to fake clues by african trackers that can be easily proved faked! My arguments remain: Caspian tigers presence in countries like Turkey, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and especially Iran need to be taken more seriously and carefully! How can someone be sure of an animal extinction in a place for exemple like Afghanistan? With isolated areas where no body can reach? Or reach easily? The proof is the deer species that was thought to be extinct there and they found a population in the mountains! The same for southeastern Turkey or southwestern Turkmanistan which has an extremely low population density! I don't want to go around in circles here but until every inch of central asia and middle east are properly searched i won't believe they are extinct! RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 11-09-2023 I have found this photo!! It is said that is from a bengal tiger however the zoo was known to have caspian tigers in their collection in the past! So it may have caspian tiger genes in him! It was from a zoo in germany from the 60´s or 70´s!!! RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 04-04-2024 Good morning!! Javan tiger is not extinct! like the zanzibar leopard, the javan tiger is not extinct! A hair was found! Like i´ve been saying! if islands so small like java and zanzibar can hide tigers and leopards imagine places as big as the middle east and central asia!!! i have no doubt the caspian tigers is still alive somewhere! Take a look: https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/javan-tiger-extinct-species-indonesia-dna-wildlife-conservation/#:~:text=A%202019%20sighting%20by%20five,a%20museum%2C%20the%20study%20shows. RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 04-26-2024 The Caspian tiger killed in the Kopet Dag region of Turmenistan near the Sumbar river is 70 years old!!! He is at a museum in Turkmenistan to this day!!! He is one of the largest caspian tigers known along with one killed in Azerbaijan in 1899!!! https://central-asia.news/turkmeniya/obshhestvo-turkmeniya/chychely-tyranskogo-tigra-v-gosydarstvennom-myzee-tyrkmenistana-ispolniaetsia-70-let Below a colored photograph of the Caspian tiger killed in Çukurca Turkey in 1970!!! RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - peter - 04-26-2024 (04-26-2024, 02:31 AM)lfelipe86 Wrote: The Caspian tiger killed in the Kopet Dag region of Turmenistan near the Sumbar river is 70 years old!!! He is at a museum in Turkmenistan to this day!!! He is one of the largest caspian tigers known along with one killed in Azerbaijan in 1899!!! Very interesting article, Felipe. It confirms the information in 'Säugetiere der Sowjetunion' of Heptner and Sludskij, German translation (1980). They wrote Turan tigers, although somewhat smaller than the Amur tiger, could reach a large size at times. Many thanks! RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 04-27-2024 That is why i believe that stripes patherns and other physical features are not the best way to identify a subspecies of tiger! caspian tigers and siberian tigers are so close in term of DNA that they share many charactertistics! i found another siberian tiger with many caspian like traits! like tail patherns and belly fur! many other photos of tigers online show their similarities!! RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 04-27-2024 (04-26-2024, 05:06 AM)peter Wrote:(04-26-2024, 02:31 AM)lfelipe86 Wrote: The Caspian tiger killed in the Kopet Dag region of Turmenistan near the Sumbar river is 70 years old!!! He is at a museum in Turkmenistan to this day!!! He is one of the largest caspian tigers known along with one killed in Azerbaijan in 1899!!! Thanks! It is also interesting that the article mentions a 1989 sighting at lake balkhash!!! I´ve read about a mid 2000´s sighting by a russian fisherman that saw a tigress with cubs in the same area! It appears that lake balkhash along with Golestan and Gilan regions, East Turkey, northern afghanistan and Romit region in Tadjikstan are possible places of caspian tiger survival!! The pathern of sightings in those regions are very consistent! The same thing that happened with the javan tiger and they foun hair and DNA! It makes the survival of caspian tigers very possible! RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - peter - 04-27-2024 (04-27-2024, 05:02 PM)lfelipe86 Wrote:(04-26-2024, 05:06 AM)peter Wrote:(04-26-2024, 02:31 AM)lfelipe86 Wrote: The Caspian tiger killed in the Kopet Dag region of Turmenistan near the Sumbar river is 70 years old!!! He is at a museum in Turkmenistan to this day!!! He is one of the largest caspian tigers known along with one killed in Azerbaijan in 1899!!! The more I read (referring to articles) and hear (referring to stories from eastern Turkey), Felipe, the more I think authorities in some regions and countries are not that keen on possible survivors of the unslaught that took place in the period 1950-1980. Today, tigers are protected animals, meaning authorities are more or less obliged to protect them. Protecting an apex predator, however, means the entire ecosystem needs to be protected. This means the region can't be 'developed'. Indonesia (referring to both Java and Sumatra) isn't the only region where tigers are not welcome. In 2011, a well-known Chinese tiger biologist visited a region in central China where rumours about the presence of a big cat were quite persistent. His, very interesting, findings were discussed in the tiger extinction thread. After that publication, I expected a follow-up. Most unfortunately, silence once again took over. The district in which evidence of the presence of a large cat was found was located quite close to a large city. Tigers are monitored and studied in northeastern China, but in more developed districts in central parts of China it could (referring to tolerance) be a different story. As to the Caspian region. After, say, 1970, there have been quite a few reports about the possible existence of big cats in remote and wild districts. That and persistent rumours about sightings. The problem in that part of central Asia was, and is, the political situation. After the former Sowjetunion imploded, many more or less autonomous regions were faced with a completely new situation. Not seldom, a struggle for power erupted. At times, the result was chaos. Not a situation in which conservation would have been a political priority, one would think. Apart from all that, there's the tiger. In spite of it's large size, there's no question it has the uncanny ability to disappear from sight completely. When a population, after decades of hunting and poisoning, has been decimated, if not nearly completely destroyed, some survivors apparently are able to pick up the message and to act in a very adequate way. They become less vocal, move to remote districts and also seem to be able to effectively hide kills from sight. Prints are seldom left, confrontations are avoided and when the heat is turned on they're apparently able to get to the right conclusion and move out of sight once again. In this way, detection can be avoided for a prolonged period of time. In spite of their elusiveness, survivors apparently are able to find each other every now and then and breed. Every, solitary, wild cat is elusive, but the tiger is a big animal that needs a large territory, a lot of cover, water and at least 20 large prey animals a year to survive. In a district of plenty where they're not hunted, it's easy to find, and hunt them, but when the tide changes tigers are able to adapt. In the days of Dersu, when they were on their way out in Manchuria and the southern part of the Russian Far East, tigers were seldom seen and difficult to hunt. The stories of Corbett and Anderson suggest man-eaters could be hunted in the days of the British Raj by those who knew about tigers and had the time to go after them, but this is not the complete story. Not seldom, tigers not seldom were able to turn the tables. There's no question most man-eaters died of old age. It can't be excluded some people (referring to the situation today) keep silent about the presence of tigers in countries where they were allegedly 'exterminated' in order to avoid unwelcome attention. Even in National Parks and Zapovedniks (referring to the Russian Far East), biologists seem to have become more wary about sharing information over the years. In spite of the protection and the new, tougher, laws, cameras have been destroyed and stolen and well-known tigers suddenly 'disappeared'. My guess is the tiger will always be an 'enemy of the State' for many. And tigers know. RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 04-27-2024 (04-27-2024, 07:30 PM)peter Wrote:(04-27-2024, 05:02 PM)lfelipe86 Wrote:(04-26-2024, 05:06 AM)peter Wrote:(04-26-2024, 02:31 AM)lfelipe86 Wrote: The Caspian tiger killed in the Kopet Dag region of Turmenistan near the Sumbar river is 70 years old!!! He is at a museum in Turkmenistan to this day!!! He is one of the largest caspian tigers known along with one killed in Azerbaijan in 1899!!! I agree 100% with you! The chinese region you mentioned is aroung Ankang, Zhenping county in central China, where many reports and sightings are recorded including footprints and killed prey like cows and even a black bear was reported killed by a south china tiger! Regarding caspian tigers; like you said, real efforts in finding the tiger by the authorities are not very common and even when the authorities try they to do something about it they come short or dont followvup on their discovery! During the 70s iranian authorities tried to find evidence of caspian tiger survival in iran and reported they have found nothing; it took an international source to find it, in 1974 Paul Joslin found 17cm tiger pugmarks in northern iran! That calls atention for the possible lack of interest by the local authorities like you said or at least low resources to reach the areas where tigers live. Many national parks and reserves have been created in the areas where tigers were recorded but without suficient resources is difficult to get the evidence needed to prove their survival. The dna testing for the javan tiger is an exemple. RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 04-28-2024 The Caspian tiger in China is one of the most mystirious populations of tigers in the world! Very little information is available about it! It seems that desapeared during the 1960s, however according to chinese websites informations, like the south china tiger in central China, tigers in Xinjiang were recorded during the mid 90s and 2000s especialy in the Tian Shan mountain region!!! Obs: The tigers in Xinjiang are considered a different subspecies in China! Even the scientific name is different!! instead of panthera tigris virgata, is known as panthera tigris lecoqi!!! They called it Xinjiang tiger!! https://m.baike.so.com/doc/354610-375607.html RE: The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - lfelipe86 - 04-28-2024 More info about tiger sightings in Xinjiang!! https://www.sohu.com/a/574958581_99945595#google_vignette Caspian tigers north of the Caucasus? - Larch - 05-12-2024 Hello guys, I was hoping someone could help me out with this. I keep seeing claims that Caspian tigers reached north of the Caucasus into the southern Russian and Ukrainian plains and the source for this is "Mammals of the Soviet Union". Reading the archived version, I found the section where the claim originates from: https://archive.org/details/mammalsofsov221992gept/page/112/mode/2up?view=theater To paraphrase "While tigers were restricted to the southern Caucasus in the 19th century, it's 'probable' that it they were common in the northern Caucasus, and perhaps even the plains of Ukraine and southern Russia." While the authors make it very clear that the historic northern limit of permanent Amur tiger habitat was roughly the Amur river and that the records from north of there were vagrants, the section on Caspian tigers having any permanent presence north of the trans-Caucasus all sounds pretty suggestive at best. I can see maybe the Cis-Caucasus(north Caucasus) but none of this really qualifies as proof of them living in eastern Europe proper i.e. Ukraine or southern Russian plains. What do you think? RE: Caspian tigers north of the Caucasus? - TheHyenid76 - 05-12-2024 (05-12-2024, 09:44 AM)Larch Wrote: Hello guys, I was hoping someone could help me out with this. I keep seeing claims that Caspian tigers reached north of the Caucasus into the southern Russian and Ukrainian plains and the source for this is "Mammals of the Soviet Union". Reading the archived version, I found the section where the claim originates from: Hello my friend! There is already a thread on Caspian tigers on this forum, so if you have any questions or information you would like to share please post them there. MODS take both these posts and take them to the Caspian tiger thread and delete this. As for your question, the tiger (Panthera tigris) never reached mainland Europe. As for Ukraine or southern Russian plains, these requires more research and historical digging. More on the westernmost distribution of the tiger will be posted later. |