Tigers are the largest and most endangered of the world’s big cats. With no more than 3,200 tigers remaining in the wild, conservationists are working hard to prevent the species from going extinct outside of captivity—which some wildlife scientists predict could happen within the next 10 years.
Most tigers live in the rain forests of South and Southeast Asia, where they are the dominant predator. However, the largest tiger subspecies, the Siberian, or Amur, tiger, lives in a relatively small strip of frigid birch forest along the coast of the Russian Far East. Amur tigers are used to winter temperatures that are far below freezing. The largest Amur tigers can weigh up to 300 kilos, or 660 pounds—equal in size to a medium-size grizzly bear.
The bengal tiger, most of which live in India, is the most numerous of the tiger subspecies. Even so, fewer than 2,000 bengal tigers remain in the wild, down from an estimated 40,000 at the middle of the 20th Century.
Tigers are solitary animals, with males and females getting together only to mate. Mother tigers usually give birth to two or three cubs, and invest a lot of time in raising them and teaching them to hunt.
