Siberian Tiger

The Siberian tiger is also known as Amur tiger, Manchurian tiger, Northeast China tiger and Ussurian tiger. Its Latin name is Panthera tigris altaicia.

The Siberian tiger can reach a length of 130 inches (286 centimeters) which makes it the largest of the different tiger variants. The Siberian tiger also has a very broad muzzle compared to other tiger variants, and male Siberian tigers usually have mane. The typical body length for male Siberian tigers is 106 - 130 inches (233.2 - 286 cm) while females are smaller and usually stay between 95 and 108 inches (209 and 237.6 centimeters). Tigers are measured between from nose to tail tip. They male Siberian tigers are much heavier than the female tigers and usually weigh from 419 - 675 lb (190 - 306 kg). The really large male Siberian tigers weigh 800 lb (364 kg) or more. Female Siberian tigers tend to stay around 221 - 368 lb (101 - 168 kg).

The coat of the Siberian tiger is orange and a bit paler than the coat of the other tiger subspecies. There is also a very pale variant known as White Siberian tiger. Both variants have brown stripes that are very widely spaced compared to the black and narrowly spaced stripes of the other subspecies. The belly is white.

The wild Siberian tiger live in eastern Russia, northeastern China and North Korea. Earlier, wild Siberian tigers could also be found in southeast Russia and South Korea. Siberian tigers are near extinct in the wild, but have the largest captive population of all the different tiger subspecies. Estimations claim that there exists between 350 and 500 wild Siberian tigers, but we still do not know the exact figure. In the captive population, around 500 specimens participate in conservation programs, including the Species Survival Program (SSP). A majority of these specimens descend from 83 Siberian tigers caught from the wild. Most scientists agree that this population is large enough to be stable and genetically diverse.

Wild Siberian tigers hunt chiefly elk and wild boar, and every Siberian tiger requires a big territory. Male Siberian tigers will try to claim a territory of roughly 800–1,000 km2 (309–390 mile2), while females usually claim around 100-400 km2 (39–154 mile2). The typical environment for the Siberian tigers is birch woodlands and areas of scrub oak.

In Russia, the amount of known wild Siberian tigers was no larger than 24 specimens in the 1940’s. In 1994, estimations showed a Russian population of 150-200 tigers and three years later this figure had rose to 360-400. The increased number is due to conservational efforts and the designated protected areas in Russia: Kedrovaya Pad, Lazovsky and Sikhote-Alin. Since the Russian tigers roam large areas and cross the Russian border, the exact number of tigers in Russia is naturally hard to determine. The Chinese and North Korean tiger populations are much smaller and estimations show that there are currently less than 35 Siberian tigers in China.

adult siberian tiger
Picture by Malene Thyssen, www.mtfoto.dk/malene/