Tigers

The photo is taken from Wikipedia, I do not claim it as my property.

There are four lucky animals symbols for good luck in Chinese belief, one is the giant tortes, one is the phoenix, one is the dragon and the last, but not least, is the tiger and you know what? 2010 is the year of a Tiger in Chinese calendar and also for the Vancouver winter Olympic! Then of course, today's topic is going to be the biggest cat on earth: Tigers.

Every cat in the feline family is an excellent hunter, but the Panthera tigris, also commonly known as the tiger, is the true King of the Jungle, the males can weigh more than 1/3 of a ton, or at least there was a record on it, and it can grow up to 12 ft. (3.6m) long, including the tail.

Despite their massive size, the tigers can stalk nearly silently while hunting. Like all cats, except for the cheetahs, their front claws are retractable. Their fur is striped and do you know what happens if we shave the fur? Their skin matches to their fur patterns! That means, their skin is also striped according to their fur! They are usually orange with black stripes, but on rare occasion in the wild, they do have white tigers.

Also like all cats, this time except for the lions, the tigers are solitary, they only can be seen with company under 2 normal circumstances: 1) Mating season 2) A mother with cubs. A female tiger can have 3~4 cubs per litter, weighing about 2.2 pounds, all those cubs are born blind. The mortality of the cubs are really high, about half of those cubs won't survive through their first year due to perhaps hunger, drought, illness, or attack from predators and so on. When a male cubs grows to 4~5 years of age and with females from 3~4 years old, they can start reproduce.

Tigers can live about 15 years in the wild, but they can also live more than 20 years in captivity.

The diet of a tiger is of course usually meat, the water buffalo is their favorite food. But sometimes tigers do eat some vegetations for digestion. While hunting, the tiger can speed up to 49-65 kilometers per hour (35-40 miles per hour) and can leap up to 10 feet!

Sadly, due to lack of habitat, illegal hunting and perhaps global warming, those beautiful big cats are much less than 7,000 today.