rediscovery of the south china tiger?.......

rediscovery of the south china tiger?.......
16-10-2007

some good news...

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2...nt_6171865.htm

though i must say from the supposed picture taken, you'd think the tiger had posed!!

this is good news for two reasons. there has been talk or releasing captive SC tigers back into the wild - a task that has gotten a tince easier if they have rediscovered wild stock and thus a potential suitable habitat to focus conservation efforts on (rather than re-stocking another). secondly SC tigers are dying out from inbreeding in captivity and you would assume the wild situation would be just as bad or worse. the discovery of a new genetic group would be exceptionally valuable to the population (though possibly not enough to solve the problem entirely).

how to transfer this genetics is another question but things just got a whole lot better for this species (that is if its not just "feral" tigers from elesewhere!)

23-10-2007

What a shame - it will be ground up into someone's medication before you know it. The fact that it's a wild tiger will make it more valuable.....for medicine not for breeding. (Not cynical - just a realist.....the market for this type of thing is still huge and as long as people want it and have the big bucks to pay for it....it will continue.)

24-10-2007

I wish they could rediscover the Caspian Tiger....

25-10-2007

or the Bali tiger

25-10-2007

......what about the sabre tooth tiger?

If you believe wild (elusive) pumas live in the Australian Bush then anything is possible.

25-10-2007

I think the Bali tiger is probably a 'no-hoper' as the forested areas on Bali I believe are very limited nowadays. I would love to know whether the Javan and Bali Tigers were one and the same subspecies really- or how much smaller the Bali actually was. I've seen only two genuine pictures of Bali Tigers(both shot) but you cannot tell from an old photo.

Caspian Tiger- there were still unsubstantiated reports into the 1970's- mainly from eastern Turkey. I think a genuine skin (minus its tail) was produced from a shooting just a couple of years previously at that time. There have been other reports of them since. I know of only ONE (proven) photo(b/w) of a Caspian- in the Berlin Zoo...

25-10-2007

i have read that some authorities regarded the bali and javan as one and the same. i suspect this very well amy have been the case. as anyone who has ever been to bali would know, its an absolute DEFINATE that there are no tigers left on the island.

i also sincerly doubt that there are any left on java or that teh caspian tiger has any memebers of is subspecies left.

malayan tigers have now been given the distinction of being a seperate subspecies so the number has once again (i think its p.t jacksonii). this is somewhat unusual since there would have once definately been a hybridisation zone between the indochinese and malayan tigers, in fact at one stage i imagine all tigers bar the island forms had a degree of mixing since the distribution would have been continuous. personally, whilst i'm all for preserving genetic integrity of subspecies, if we ever come to a stage when we decide to preserve at least some natural habiat in all parts of the world, id'e be all for restocking tigers back into these regions. you would assume that sumtrans would be suited to java and that bengal/siberian hybrids are probably not disimilar to caspian tigers. if the south china tigers are preserved in teh wild and eventually despite mixing with captive stock, still suffer from inbreeding, i would suggest mixing in a few indochinese. theoretically they will eventually begin to revert back to forms identical to their old subspecies, should they be free of interference and that natural selection favours the same genetic variations as it did historically....

26-10-2007

Yeah, that's what I suspected somehow(Bali/Javan subspecies being one and the same) If they colonised Bali by swimming from Java, they could probably go the other way too-when they were sufficiently numerous, so that the two populations still had (at least hypothetically) the ability to mix. If so then they weren't entirely seperate races. I think the Javans were also considered extinct by the 1970's.

Taking this a stage further, I wonder how different(if at all) the Sumatran is from those other two island 'races' or whether in fact all three island tigers were really the same subspecies. A lot is written about the Bali Tiger being the 'smallest race of all' but I wonder how accurate that oft- quoted statement really is.

Caspians seemed to resemble a stockier version of the Siberian. There's something very appealling to me about this particular subspecies- the fact that it was found in the Middle East perhaps? They suffered the usual persecution until it was too late for them to recover and I fear they are gone for good too. Only a miracle would produce a rediscovery now...

26-10-2007

I'm sure restocking with a similar form of tiger is better than no having no tigers at all, if the habitat was somehow available to support them. We are fortunate we do still have other similar races(Sumatran, Siberian) to those populations which are extinct. I'm sure also that as you suggest, they would evolve back into the appearance of the original subspecies too. This would definately be possible IF(and its a big IF) there was suitable habitat/prey to support them.

26-10-2007

there was no need for tigers to swim anywhere. 10,000 years ago all the Indonesian islands as far as Bali were connected by dry land, courtesy of the ice age lowering sea levels

26-10-2007

...................which brings us to the whole wide topic of reintroduction.

It's been proven on quite a few occasions that reintroduction is futile unless the cause of the animal's decimation in the first place is not removed. In the majority of cases this cause is PEOPLE.

Do you really think the day will come when tigers can be reintroduced to Bali and Java?
Or any part of Asia (with it's rapidly increasing population)?

I hope so, but I don't really think it will happen, at least not on an effective scale.

26-10-2007

i doubt it. bali has virtually nil suitable habitat and like java is far too overpopulated, yet on a smaller scale. it would be neither benificial to the tigers or the people taht live on the island. the few areas of habitat left in java are under severe threat and some of the prey species are critically endangered themselves, introducing sumatran tigers, only to find they prey on what few baby javan rhinos are born would not be a good idea!

its always interested me that tiigers never made it to borneo. most other sumatran species managed to colonise this island also. likewise it interests me that the now considered distinct subspecies of asian elephant on borneo appears to have never colonised much of the island. there is virtually nil fossil evidence of teh species there in prehistoric or historic times, which probably helped fuel teh belief that they were in fact an introduced species....

26-10-2007

I also have found it interesting that there are no tigers on Borneo. The island was certainly connected to the rest of the mainland during lower sea levels. Maybe there was some sort of terrestrial separation factor at work, hence the different species of orangs and clouded leopards for instance than are found elsewhere. However there were and are irregular reports of tigers being sighted on Borneo so there are some amongst the cryptozoological community who are of the opinion that there are tigers there after all, just ones that haven't been officially discovered yet. (Not my opinion, note!)

26-10-2007

may be a silly question, but is there, or histroically, was there many deer species, and large bufflo, banteng like animal in borneo?

26-10-2007

i believe there still are. pretty sure banteng exist on borneo as do some typical asian deer species such as sambar and muntjac.

another absent speicies however is the malayan tapir. i can only conclude that species such as it and tigers, had evolved in ranges farther north and still had not fully colonised the southern section of southeast asia when borneo became separated. this may be backed up by the belief that the south china tiger is teh ancestor of all other living tiger subspecies and that tapirs evolved in the americas, with the ancestor of the malayan species crossing over from the bering straight.

still its hard to imagine that so many other species had by that stage already made it there, but not these two....