The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata)

[peter]

LARCH

Welcome to the forum! 

Hyena is right: creating a new thread about the Caspian tiger will result in loss of info. Our policy is to post everything about the Caspian tiger in one thread. In this way, everyone interested in this subspecies will be able to find new information and join a discussion. 

As to the question. 

The book of Heptner and Sludskij is one of the most informative. If they say Caspian tigers may have reached the outskirts of southeastern Europe in the early Middle Ages, chances are they had very good reasons to get to that conclusion. One has to remember the distance between the northwestern part of the Caspian and the Sea of Azov (and the Black Sea) is well in reach for an animal known for it's ability to cover a large distance in a short period of time. Last but not least is people back then lacked the means to hunt large predatory animals. Even after 1850, rifles were uncommon in quite many regions of central Asia. In contrast to what many think, most tiger subspecies didn't disappear in the twentieth century, but (well) after World War Two.    

A big cat apparently (referring to reliable reports from central parts of China and Java in particular) is able to survive unseen for a prolonged period of time in a region where it was allegedly 'exterminated' decades ago. To this day, there are persistent rumours about the presence of big cats in Afghanistan and the region west and southwest of the Caspian.  

All this to say reports about the possible presence of big cats in what may seem to be unsuited regions like southeastern Ukraine a few centuries ago can't be dismissed out of hand. Big cats are elusive animals. Only very few people really know a few things about the natural world. Reply