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

[BorneanTiger]

(05-11-2019, 05:54 PM)Shadow Wrote:

(05-02-2019, 09:28 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:

(05-02-2019, 09:14 PM)Shadow Wrote:

(05-02-2019, 07:48 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:

(05-02-2019, 02:25 AM)Sanju Wrote:

(04-28-2019, 12:37 AM)Pckts Wrote: Cont'd

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Close to 11' ft indian monster

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~ Korean Tiger Hunting, 1922, photographed by Ando Kimio. According to the statistics of the Governor-General of Korea, the number of Chosŏn tigers slaughtered during the period of Japanese occupation was around 141. This tiger is arguably the last male tiger to have been photographed, on October 2, 1922, in Gyŏngju, Mt. Daedŏk, in Kyŏngsangbukto province. The tiger skin was dedicated to the Imperial House of Japan. ~

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All those beautiful tigers..
Sorrow and rage piercing me.

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A good news is that now even Wikipedia is taking the view about there being 6 subspecies more seriously (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger#Subspecies), in light of the genetic study in 2018 (https://www.cell.com/current-biology/ful...all%3Dtrue), so hopefully, people don't just listen to the Cat Specialist Group's assertion in 2017 about there being only 2 subspecies (https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y).

I find it more interesting, that when you look WWF site(s), vast majority and their main site have 6 subspecies even today there. I wonder if they wait for something or are they just lazy to update :) Could be both :) But then again not all biologists agree with cat specialist group in this matter so some instance can wait and see still how discussion and studies continue. One interesting thing would be to know has it had any influence for instance to Amur tiger conservation. Somehow I have this feeling, that not.

http://wwf.panda.org/tigers.cfm

Not only would there be disagreement with the Cat Specialist Group, but also within the group. 2 of the people who insisted that there are indeed 6 subspecies (https://www.cell.com/current-biology/ful...all%3Dtrue), Carlos Driscoll and Shu-Jin Luo, are members of the Cat Specialist Group (Page 2: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y). I wonder why this would happen, did Driscoll and Luo want to prove to the other members that their classification in 2017 about there being only 2 subspecies had to be revised?

One interesting thing to see is website of Cat Specialist Group at the moment, today. When you look at information about tiger and open part Description. When we remember it, that many people seek information from websites and then we look at that site and what it tells to people...  For me it looks like, that they haven´t been able to find consensus yet in science community. 

It looks something like asking: Yes or no? And getting answer: I don´t know.

http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=124

They also kept the pages on the African lion (http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=108&L=...31%3Fid%3D) and Asiatic lion (http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=113), despite the fact that they're no longer seen as subspecies, with the Asiatic lion being grouped with lions in northern parts of Africa, including the Barbary lion, as Panthera leo leo, which might sound peculiar because the geographical separation between African and Indian lions is far greater than that between the Sumatran tiger in the Sunda Islands and the Malayan tiger in Mainland Asia, and it seems unanimous amongst geneticists and taxonomists, be it the Cat Specialist Group (https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y), or the 'rebels' Driscoll and Luo (https://www.cell.com/current-biology/ful...all%3Dtrue), that the Sumatran tiger is not the same subspecies as its Mainland Asian cousins. As in, the Sumatran tiger is either a different subspecies, or member of a different subspecies, to its mainland Asian cousins, but the Asiatic lion is not a different subspecies to all African lions, despite the vast geographical separation.

Either way, it seems that the CSG recognized that the 2017 revision of subspecies of lions and tigers is not enough to not treat the different populations of lions and tigers separately. For instance, people know that the Amur tiger of Northeast Asia is geographically, genetically and morphologically different to the Bengal tiger of South Asia, in the same way that people know that African and Asiatic lions are geographically and morphologically different to each other (even if not so much genetically), and a change in taxonomy doesn't change that, looking at the body of modern literature or media on these types of lions and tigers, even post-2017. Reply