Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional virtues - Who knows the habits, species and morphology of tigers!

Who knows the habits, species and morphology of tigers!

The tiger's head is large and round, the neck is thick and the ears are short, and there are whiskers on both sides of the upper lip. The body shape is robust and powerful. The forehead has a marking that looks like the word "king". The back of the ear is black, but there is a significant white spot. There is also a white spot on the eye. The iris is yellow and the pupil is round. The body color is predominantly orange-yellow or yellowish-brown, covered with black stripes; the belly and the inside of the limbs are nearly white or white with yellow. Throughout the tiger's range, in order to adapt to their respective environments, southern tigers are darker in color than northern individuals, with denser and clearer stripes. The tiger's summer coat is short and smooth, and the winter coat is longer than the summer coat, especially noticeable in tigers distributed in the north. The tail has barred or ringed markings, and the end of the tail is usually black, but without long hairs.

The tiger's forelimbs are more powerful than its hindlimbs, making it easier to grab large prey before biting into its neck. The size of the paw pads correlates with the sex and age of the tiger and is an important parameter for identifying individuals in field population surveys. As in most cats, the sharp tiger claws are freely retractable, retracted when walking and resting, and extended only when initiating an attack and feeding.

Tigers generally have a body length of 1.4 to 2.8 meters, a tail length of 0.6-1.1 meters, a hind foot length of 0.3-0.4 meters, and a shoulder height of 0.95-1.1 meters. However, the size of tigers in different regions varies greatly, the northern subspecies of the Northeast tiger is larger than the African lion, weighing up to 320 kilograms, which is the largest of the existing cats; while the Sumatran tiger's body weight is only 95 (female)-110 (male) kilograms. Female tigers are generally only half or slightly more than the weight of males in the same region.