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

[GuateGojira]

Great data peter. About the distintion between "amoyensis" and "styani", I will bet for a simple cline rater than a distinct subspecies. However we most take in count that when Luo et al. (2004) studied the DNA of China tigers, they found a full lineage was practicaly undistinguishable from the "average" Indochina tiger, while the other lineage had its own haplotypes. Could this suggest that the specimens that you state as "styani" (based in Pocock, 1929, I guess) are the "new" South China tigers while those from the southern China and North Indochina (amoyensis-corbetti) are the original stream of tigers?

Other question to all of us, could the "blue" color of some tigers of that area, been a last remanent of some specimens of Wanhsien tiger that inhabitated the north of China up to the Beringia region? Definetly, the South China tiger is one of the most mysterious subspecies, ranging in size from a small Sunda tiger up to an average sized Bengal-Amur tiger.

On the skull issue, I found this interesting quote: 
“The South China tiger is believed to have a more archaic skull, whose ratio of the length and width is relatively larger than other tiger subspecies. Its body is slim with a slender waist. It is distinguishable from other tiger subspecies by its narrower face, longer nose, more intense orange color, short fur, longer legs, and shorter & broader stripes which are spaced far apart compared with those of Bengal and Siberian tigers.”
 Source: http://english.savechinastigers.org/node/31
 
Obviously, I searched in my database and this is what I found:
 
Subspecies              Ratio GSL-ZW       Sample
P. t. amoyensis       1.47                         6
P. t. corbetti              1.46                          3
P. t. sondaica            1.43                          13
P. t. altaica               1.44                           13
P. t. tigris                  1.41                          18
 
Incredibly as it is, it seems that this is correct, as the largest ratio came from the South China tigers (1.47). This means that the South China tigers had a narrow skulls in comparison with the other “modern” subspecies. The second narrower group is that of Indochinese tigers, but with such a small sample (3) it is too early to achieve any final conclusion.
 
It seems that the first tigers had narrow skulls, a trait that probably presented also the Wanhsien tiger and is now show in P. t. amoyensis (styani?). The second tiger group in evolve is that of Indochina, with also narrow skulls. The later mainland groups have much wider skulls with P. t. tigris presenting the smallest ratio.
 
Sunda tigers seems that had changed very much trough they evolution. The Ngandong tiger had a ratio of 1.62, very narrow for any modern tiger, but latter Javanese forms seems to had increased they skull wide and carnassials’ size, but also developed smaller sagital crest and narrow occipital areas. It is obvious that Sunda tigers had different masticator systems in comparison with mainland populations.
 

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(04-22-2014, 07:18 AM)'peter' Wrote: Caldwell's book was called 'Blue Tiger'. He saw 'blue' tigers on more than one occasion. Although his descriptions were clear as water, many had doubts about the colour. I don't know where this photograph was taken, but one has to assume it was China. A recent photograph. And what do we see?

*This image is copyright of its original author

   

 

This is just a photoshoped image from a normal colored tiger, nothing more. The intention of its creator, I think, was to show how a "blue" tiger would look in the past.
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