Nine days ago three Malayan tiger cubs were born at the Palm Beach Zoo, and this video, showing the birth and some postnatal solicitude, is already up. It’s touching (and adaptive) to see the care with which that big, fanged maternal mouth picks up the newborns.
This subspecies, Panthera tigris jacksoni, is one of the six tiger subspecies that remain on the planet; until recently there were three others, but we’ve driven them to extinction. This one lives, as the name indicates, only on the Malayan peninsula, and, like all tiger subspecies, is highly endangered. Wikipedia gives this sad note:
Recent counts showed there are 600–800 Malayan tigers in the wild, making it the most common tiger subspecies other than the Bengal and perhaps also the Indochinese tigers. It is, nevertheless, still an endangered subspecies.
Six to eight hundred? Most common? (Other estimates are as low as 500.) What have we done to our planet? There may come a time—perhaps in our children’s lives—when tigers no longer live freely in the wild.
h/t: Michael
This is a sad fact, but at the same time, it’s an awakening one. I just hope that those in charge will hear the wake up call.
Stop destroying tigers, stop destroying the Earth.
This is what we have to stop then –
http://galen.metapath.org/popclk.html
🙁
…which I calculate very roughly brings the world population to 7 billion people in approximately October 2014.
Population growth sure plays a part, but the main drivers of tiger poaching are ridiculous superstitions, especially in China, about how, for instance, eating tiger penis increases your sexual potency.
This makes it even more infuriating, since they’re being killed for the stupidest reasons ever.
Unfortunately I think we’d find other reasons to kill them as our population increases and encroaches on more and more of their habitat. Top predators don’t mix well with humans — which means we have to stay out of their land. And it’s hard to see that happening without a lot of political will and money to save them.
And these are iconic species. What about all those creepy species that are just as important to the ecosystem, but nobody goes into bat for?
I have to say that, with populations as they are, I feel the loss of a tiger more painfully than the loss of a hundred thousand humans.
There you go again, ruining a nice story about kittehs with depressing ecological reality.
But think of the millions of people who’d be dead, if it wasn’t for Traditional Chinese Medicine™! That totally harmless and holistic panacea.
Five days ago three Amur tiger cubs were born at the Zurich Zoo, Switzerland:
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich/region/Drei-Babytiger-haben-Geburt-ueberlebt/story/23003469
Tigrrrs rrr grrrate.
We will do better as we get our shit together, hopefully it is getting there and perhaps soon enough for the big’uns.
OOps, should have googled that _first_; Al Bundy-ism, huh!?
making it the most common tiger subspecies
Hmm. Perhaps the term “least rare” would be better used here?
The cubs sure are active right from the get-go, eh? Love the big yawn from one of the little guys near the end of the vid!