ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[Greatearth]

I think DNA analysis, size, physical description, and other things within the subspecies is kinda pointless. Remember, the tiger is living in national park these days. Human population is still increasing and habitats is disappearing. It's very difficult them to go to different environment habitats in another national parks unlike the past. Tiger could go anywhere 100 years ago because it was a lot different than today. They could just go anywhere and adapted in new areas and different environments. It might have been a lot different 100 years ago. Today, the tiger is keep living in remote place like national park. More and worse competition would be appeared in future as tiger population is increasing.




I just thought about Bengal tigers in Himalaya and Sundarbans. Because these 2 tigers are made me think of local adaptation of the Korean tiger in Korean peninsula. 
This goes to more complicate if I am studying Siberian tiger lived in northern Manchuria, Mongolia, and Siberia, South China tiger in many different places of China (China is very huge country and it has many different nature and environment), and Caspian tiger since Central Asia has very diverse habitats and environments.





A. The Himalayan Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) of Bhutan.
The Bengal tiger in Bhutan or Himalayan Bengal tiger looks a lot different than other Bengal tigers in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Their fur is longer and color is different. They don’t even look like robust and heavier built like Peter mentioned about Bengal tigers in India. They looked evolved as adapting steep environment in cold Himalayan mountains. I don’t know the size of the Himalayan tiger In Bhutan. However, I do not believe they were robust and heavy as tigers in India.
It is like the tiger in Korea was generally smaller than their brothers in Russia and Northeast China since Korea has the highest and the steepest environments. It also had a short fur since Korea was warmer. The question is this isn't always true since northern Korea has an extremely cold hellish winter with a minimum temperature of -51 °C degree and easily go below -30 °C degree. The average annual temperature there is  -0.06 °C degree in some area of North Korea. Their fur has to be long in my opinion if they are living in North Korea.

The Bengal tigers in Bhutan in summer I believe. It doesn’t look robust and it looks a lot different than Bengal tiger in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh.

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The Himalayan tiger in Bhutan in winter or high Himalayan mountain areas. They look more like the Siberian tiger. The Bhutan Bengal tiger in Himalaya mountains is very beautiful, especially their fur and color. I prefer Himalayan Bengal tiger more than Bengal tiger in India and Nepal.

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The Bengal tiger in Bhutan in steep mountain of Himalaya. Some photos remind me mountains in Korea

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B. The Sundarbans and Similipal Bengal tiger of India and Bangaldesh.

We all know the Bengal tiger in these areas are the smallest.

I am not sure of Similipal, but tiger is in Sundarbans also suffer from many prey lost.

I am copy and paste it because I am tired of typing
“Forest inventories reveal a decline in standing volume of the two main commercial mangrove species – sundari (Heritiera spp.) and gewa (Excoecaria agallocha) — by 40% and 45% respectively between 1959 and 1983.[30][31] Despite a total ban on all killing or capture of wildlife other than fish and some invertebrates, it appears that there is a consistent pattern of depleted biodiversity or loss of species (notably at least six mammals and one important reptile) in the 20th century, and that the "ecological quality of the original mangrove forest is declining".[7] The endangered species that live within the Sundarbans and extinct species that used to be include the royal Bengal tigers, estuarine crocodile, northern river terrapins (Batagur baska), olive ridley sea turtles, Gangetic dolphin, ground turtles, hawksbill sea turtles and king crabs (horse shoe). Some species such as hog deer (Axis porcinus), water buffalos (Bubalus bubalis), barasingha or swamp deer (Cervus duvauceli), Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus), single horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) and the mugger crocodiles or marsh crocodiles (Crocodylus palustris) started to become extinct in the Sundarbans towards the middle of the 20th century, because of extensive poaching and man hunting by the British.[24] There are other threatened mammal species, such as the capped langurs (Semnopithecus pileatus), smooth-coated otters (Lutrogale perspicillata), Oriental small-clawed otters (Aonyx cinerea), and great Bengal civets (Viverra zibetha).”

Not as the Siberian tiger in Russian Far East, the Bengal tiger of Sundarbans are also suffering from prey animal compare to the past. The Sunarbans tiger is also having difficult time to drink fresh water, they rather drink saltwater. That's why tiger in Sundarbans like water tanks after government setup the water tanks to provide them a freshwater. Maybe their size has been decreased because of these issues along with local adaptation? 
I do believe their habitats like include beaches, estuaries, permanent and semi-permanent swamps, tidal flats, tidal creeks, coastal dunes, back dunes and levees may have been made them to small size.

If you read Barclay book, he talks about people discovered tiger footprint in tidal flats when he was in Korea. There are many tidal flats in Korea and Peter mentioned about tiger in Korean island before. Also, tiger in Korea also had a little wild prey left in early 1900s. Even worse than prey density in today's Russia. japanese was uncivilized subhuman like Germany. Japanese genocide other Asians just like German Nazis did to other Europeans. They also over hunted the wild animals like tiger, leopard, wolf, bear, and its prey like deer and boar.  They also killed tons of dogs and drove extinct of native dogs in Korea and Manchuria for emergency food and fur. I think this was why Korean tiger was known as extremely dangerous and bloodthirsty man-eating animals. japanese was the reason of the Siberian tiger and the Amur leopard were extinct in Korea. Pretty much the same as sundarbans tiger today.


The Sundarbans tiger. They look extremely skinny.

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