Our kids love to read tiger stories. Frankly speaking, their glory is no less than that of legendary animals. Unfortunately, they’re not human friendly.
These largest wild cats are solitary hunters, they don’t hunt in groups. Would you like to know a bit more about this predator? So here are the 40 facts about tigers for your knowledge:
| Kingdom | Animalia |
| Phylum | Chordata |
| Class | Mammalia |
| Order | Carnivora |
| Suborder | Feliformia |
| Family | Felidae |
| Subfamily | Pantherinae |
| Genus | Panthera |
| Species | P. tigris |
Tiger Facts 1-5
1. You’ll find a total six subspecies of this animal across the world.
2. The Siberian tiger, the Bengal tiger, the South China tiger, the Malayan tiger, the Indochinese tiger and the Sumatran tiger are those six species.
3. You know, tigers can even mate with the lions, leopards and other cats.
4. When tigers mate with lions, the hybrids produced are generally very large in size.
5. The hybrid of a female lion and male tiger is called Tiglon, which is a smaller size offspring. On the other hand, the hybrid of a male lion and female tiger is a Liger, which is of much bigger size offspring.
Tiger Facts: 6-10
6. What types of fur colors can be seen in tigers? You may see tigers with white, gold, black and even blue fur depending on their genes.
7. A tiger can live for up to 25 years, whether in the zoos or in the open jungles.
8. It is weird, but tigers have better memory than humans.
9. To be very precise, the memory of a tiger can last thirty times longer than a human.
10. The brain of a tiger weighs about 300g. This is the largest brain size among all carnivores.
Tiger Facts 11-15
11. Tigers use their paws and teeth to hunt their prey. Although it mostly prefers to use its sharp teeth when killing, it might like to use its paws in some cases.
12. They try to kill through blood loss or strangulation. Their sharp and robust teeth can make their prey lifeless in seconds.
13. Among many other misconceptions, it’s also the one that a tiger’s body parts can be used as a medicinal cure for the sufferers.
14. For example, it’s said that some body parts of tigers can be used for treatment of digestive problems and arthritis, which is totally wrong.
15. This type of ill thought has been the main reason for unauthorized tiger killings. Poaching tigers for producing some medicines are common practice in some countries though.
Tiger Facts: 16-20
16. Some species of the tigers have gone to extinction. There were Bali tigers earlier. We don’t have this special tiger species anymore.
17. Poaching a tiger or using it for producing medication is completely illegal in China. Such an act may be punishable by death.
18. Despite imposing strict rules, the government could not ban poaching tigers completely in countries like Southeast Asia. Tigers are used for producing medications in Cambodia and Laos.
19. Do you know that a tiger’s saliva acts like an antiseptic for them? They lick their wounds to disinfect and heal them quickly.
20. A tiger’s attacking technique varies according to the need. If a crocodile attacks it when the tiger is in the water, it immediately strikes it in the eyes and makes it blind.
Tiger Facts 21-25
21. Their wide orange fur with black stripes distinguish them from other animals.
22. The tiger’s coat may vary across the subspecies. For example, tigers from Sumatra have the darkest coat, while the Bengal tigers sometimes have white coats because of a recessive gene.
23. Amur tigers are the largest tiger. The males weigh around 660 pounds and the females weigh around 370 pounds.
24. Tigers are carnivores. They prefer to eat freshly killed animals like wild pigs, dears and cattle. Unfortunately, a tiger can also become a man-eater.
25. If we talk about tiger’s eyes, they have round pupils, unlike the cats. Cats have slitted pupils. It’s because tigers hunt in both morning and evening.
Tiger Facts: 26-30
26. As for eye features, most tigers are usually found with yellow eyes. But, white tigers have blue eyes.
27. Tigers love to be in their respective territories. They mark their area with urine and by scratching on the trees.
28. It has been seen that most tigers’ night vision is almost six times better than that of humans.
29. As male tigers hunt more, they take spacious territories than the females. However, female tigers also hunt because tigers are solitary animals and do not prefer to take help from others to get food. It’s also true that the space of male tigers overlaps with the territory of females so that they can mate.
30. If many tigers have to share a kill, they let the females and the cubs eat first and prefer to wait for their turns.
Tiger Facts 31-35
31. A female tiger gives birth to two or three cubs at a time. Baby tigers are generally called cubs. The male tigers don’t help in the upbringing of the cubs.
32. It’s said that the stripes on the tigers are very unique. They are like human fingerprints.
33. Depending on which subspecies a tiger belongs to, its size may vary. For example, the Siberian tigers are almost 3.5m long and the Sumatran tigers are almost 2m long.
34. A tigress is fertile only for four or five days in a year. The females mate quite frequently this time and carry the babies for more than three months before giving birth.
35. Survival rate of tiger cubs is very low. Only half of the newborns can stay alive into adulthood. The cubs are completely blind for the first week after their birth.
Tiger Facts: 36-40
36. Tigers love the territories that have lots of prey and enough water. They are solitary animals. They like to live in their respective areas.
37. The Asian countries have the highest distribution of this animal. India, Indonesia and Siberia have varieties of these species.
38. Tigers love to live in dense jungles or swamps.
39. Although tigers rarely attack humans, they can do so if the humans come into close contact with them.
40. Unfortunately, if a small number of tigers develop the taste for human flesh, there is no way other than killing them.
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