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

[GuateGojira]

(03-17-2020, 05:01 AM)Greatearth Wrote: This is something what I found out from Chinese tigers.

I think South China tigers are normally referring to South China (Huánan, 华南). The South China tiger is calling 华南虎 (Huánanho) in Mandarin (not sure of Cantonese). So from what it sounds, I think South China tiger is tiger population or subspecies lived areas south of Yangtze River. There are many different tribes, people, langauge, and cultures in Southeast Asia even in one country. Just like tigers, clouded leopards, leopards, rhinos, and elephants, many of those people in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and others lived together with Chinese in that area before 2,000 years ago. Vietnam is notable nation that was forced out to south by Chinese. That's why Vietnam is the only country of the southeast Asia that has Chinese culture. Their languages are also sounds similar if you listen Cantonese and Vietnamese.

I guess that is why South China tiger is known as the second smallest tiger in mainland Asia, but there are descent male South China tigers that I know are more than 160 kg, and close to 3 m long. They also seemed different by each provinces. There is no doubt Chinese tigers were different in appearance and size just like Bengal tigers look different by different locations. I think today's South China tiger is the right tiger subspecies who lost their "giant" gene. Again, there are limited information, pictures, and other information of the South China tiger. I also don't know sizes of South China tiger in Chinese zoos. I can't be 100% sure about this.

There is very few information about the size/weight and skulls of the South China tiger. The figures of Mazák and those from me are based is less than 12 specimens from scatered places, which means that there is a huge are where the size is unknown. The only thing that we can see is that there was a cline in the size of the tigers in China, bigger in the north (up to 190 kg) and smaller close to the Amoy region and Hong Kong (as low as 108 kg). In fact, there is enough evidence to say that there was a continuos population trough the entire country with only clinal diferences, from the giant tigers of Manchuria to the medium sized tigers from Indochina. Also remember that some Bengal tigers lived in the southwest area, Indochinese tigers lived in the southeast, Caspian tigers in the northwest and Amur tigers in the northeast. So China had a lot of tigers subspecies/populations and they could bread between them (the nearest populations at least) with no problem; take in count that tigers can travel up to 1,000 km! The humans are the ones that created divisions in the populations and created these artificial "subspecies". Reply