The Bengal Tiger By Henry
Imagine you are walking through an Indian jungle. Then you see two beautiful black and orange tiger cubs. You are amazed to see these beautiful creatures, but you are afraid the mother might attack you so, you leave.
Bengal tigers (Panthera Tigris Tigris) look to me like a large, majestic house cat with stripes all over its body. An adult male Bengal Tiger can be 106 to 122 inches long. Adult females can be 97 – 105 inches long. The height of a male Bengal Tiger is 36 – 44 inches. The exact same is for the female. The adult male weighs 385 – 570 pounds. The adult female ways 320 – 385 pounds. The Bengal tiger has orange and gold fur with black stripes with a white underbelly and a white face. Some Bengal tigers are white with brown stripes because of a mutation, but this is rare in the wild. The Bengal Tiger has padded feet for quiet movement. Bengal Tigers also has webbed toes for swimming The bengal tiger has large canine teeth to help it kill its prey. The Bengal Tiger is a cousin to lions, leopards, and jaguars, but not the saber tooth tiger.
A female Bengal tiger can produce offspring anytime of year. The Bengal tiger carries its offspring inside of it for 93 to 111 days. Mother Bengal tigers produce 2 to 7 babies in one litter. The offspring stay with their mother till the age of three years old. During this time, they learn how to fish, hunt, and swim. At the age of three years, old the Bengal tigers can leave their mother. Bengal tigers in the wild usually die at 12 to 15 years old. In captivity they can live 20 years or more.
The Bengal Tiger lives in large tropical or sub-tropical forests, and has a territory of 40 square miles. and it must have enough prey. Bengal Tigers can eat 13 pounds of meat per day. Bengal tigers can at edible plants such as berries, but that is not their usual diet. Usually they eat half ton gaurs ( which are wild ox). When that is scarce, the bengal tiger will eat fish, monkeys porcupines, peacocks, snakes, and termites. Bengal tigers live in rocky crevices and sometimes beneath logs.
Bengal tigers only live in the center and the lower south western edge of India. A closely related subspecies with a low population is the South Chinese tiger, which has a population of less then 100 tigers in the wild. The population of the Bengal tiger is three thousand in the wild or less.
The Bengal tiger is valued for many different things. The Bengal tiger is valued for its pelt. The Bengal tiger is also bought as a pet when young. Once the tigers get older and the owners get afraid of them, they have to admit that they bought a bengal tiger, and usually the tigers are put in zoos. In Asia, people value Bengal Tigers for their whiskers, paws, and there powdered bones for medicine that are supposed to cure acne and toothaches, and arthritis, and were used to be used to poison enemies. Some people even believe that soup made from a male tiger’s genitalia increase sexual ability. People also hunt them for trophies because they want to make themselves feel powerful having killed such a powerful beast.
One of threats of the Bengal tiger is its loss of habitat. The trees in its habitat are being cut down to make way for farm land. The trees being cut down also cause their prey to leave, so they have to hunt domestic animals and the farmers kill them. Poachers kill tigers for their pelt, traditional medicines , trophies, and to make themselves feel powerful.
Captive tigers don’t die from starvation. Captive tigers are more dependent on humans than they would be in the wild. Parks and preserves protect tigers from natural predators, but don’t completely protect them from poachers. Parks and preserves help save the Bengal Tiger from deforestation. These are some other solutions. Stop cutting down as much trees and to stop using medicine made out of tiger parts.
Bibliography
Green, Carl. Endangered and Threatened Animals: The Tiger . Berkeley Heights : Enslow Publishers inc , 2003 . Print.