NAMA : RANGGA SATRIYO
KELAS : 1EA16
NPM : 15211872
TUGAS : SOFTSKILL BAHASA INGGRIS TUGAS 3
ARTICLE (SIMPLE PERFECT TENSE)
RABBIT
Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha,
found in several parts of the world. There are eight different genera in the family classified as rabbits, including the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), cottontail rabbits (genus Sylvilagus;
13 species),
and theAmami rabbit (Pentalagus furnessi, an endangered
species on Amami Ōshima, Japan). There are many other
species of rabbit, and these, along with pikas and hares, make up the order Lagomorpha.
The male is called a buck and the female is a doe; a young rabbit is a kitten or kit.
Habitat and
range
Rabbit habitats include meadows, woods, forests, grasslands, deserts and wetlands. Rabbits
live in groups, and the best known species, theEuropean rabbit, lives in
underground burrows, or rabbit
holes. A group of burrows is called a warren.
More than half the world's rabbit population resides
in North America. They are also native to southwestern Europe, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, some
islands of Japan, and in
parts of Africa and South America. They are
not naturally found in most of Eurasia, where a
number of species of hares are
present. Rabbits first entered South America relatively recently, as part of
the Great American Interchange. Much of the continent has just one species of
rabbit, the tapeti, while most
of South America's southern cone is
without rabbits.
The European rabbit has been introduced (Non Verbal
Sentence) to many places around the world.
Morphology
and ecology
The rabbit's long ears, which can be more than
10 cm (4 in) long, are probably an adaptation for detecting predators. They have
large, powerful hind legs. The two front paws have 5 toes, the extra called the
dewclaw. The hind feet have 4 toes. They are plantigrade animals
while at rest; however, they move around on their toes while running, assuming
a more digitigrade form.
Wild rabbits do not differ much in their body proportions or stance, with full,
egg-shaped bodies. Their size can range anywhere from 20 cm (8 in) in
length and 0.4 kg in weight to 50 cm (20 in) and more than
2 kg. The fur is most commonly long and soft, with colors such as shades
of brown, gray, and buff. The tail
is a little plume of brownish fur (white on top for cottontails).
Because the rabbit's epiglottis is engaged over the
soft palate except when swallowing, the rabbit is an obligate nasal breather. Rabbits have two sets of incisor teeth, one behind
the other. This way they can be distinguished from rodents, with which they are often confused. Carl Linnaeus originally
grouped rabbits and rodents under the class Glires; later, they were separated as the predominant
opinion was that many of their similarities were a result of convergent
evolution. However, recent DNA analysis and the discovery of a common ancestor has
supported (Verbal
Sentence) the view that they share a common lineage, and thus
rabbits and rodents are now often referred to together as members of the
superclass Glires.
Rabbits are hindgut digesters.
This means that most of their digestion takes place in their large intestine and cecum. In rabbits the cecum is about 10 times bigger than
the stomach and it along with the large intestine makes up roughly 40% of the
rabbit's digestive tract. The unique musculature of the cecum allows the
intestinal tract of the rabbit to separate fibrous material from more
digestible material; the fibrous material is passed as feces, while the more
nutritious material is encased in a mucous lining as a cecotrope.
Cecotropes, sometimes called "night feces", are high in minerals, vitamins and proteins that
are necessary to the rabbit's health. Rabbits eat these to meet their
nutritional requirements; the mucous coating allows the nutrients to pass
through the acidic stomach for digestion in the intestines. This process allows
rabbits to extract the necessary nutrients from their food.
Rabbits are prey animals and are therefore constantly
aware of their surroundings. For instances, in Mediterranean Europe, rabbits
are the main prey of red foxes, badgers, and Iberian lynxes. If confronted
by a potential threat, a rabbit may freeze and observe then warn others in the
warren with powerful thumps on the ground. Rabbits have a remarkably wide field
of vision, and a good deal of it is devoted to overhead scanning. They
survive predation by burrowing, hopping away in a zig- zag motion, and, if
captured, delivering powerful kicks with their hind legs. Their strong teeth
allow them to eat and to bite in order to escape a struggle.
Diet and
eating habits
Rabbits are herbivores that
feed by grazing on grass, forbs, and leafy weeds. In consequence, their diet contains
large amounts of cellulose, which is
hard to digest. Rabbits solve this problem by passing two distinct types of
feces: hard droppings and soft black viscous pellets, the latter of which are
immediately eaten. Rabbits reingest their own droppings (rather
than chewing the cud as do
cows and many other herbivores) to digest their food further and extract
sufficient nutrients.
Rabbits graze heavily and rapidly for roughly the
first half hour of a grazing period (usually in the late afternoon), followed
by about half an hour of more selective feeding. In this time, the rabbit will
also excrete many hard fecal pellets, being waste pellets that will not be
reingested. If the environment is relatively non-threatening, the rabbit will
remain outdoors for many hours, grazing at intervals. While out of the burrow,
the rabbit will occasionally reingest its soft, partially digested pellets;
this is rarely observed, since the pellets are reingested as they are produced.
Reingestion is most common within the burrow between 8 o'clock in the morning
and 5 o'clock in the evening, being carried out intermittently within that
period.
Hard pellets are made up of hay-like fragments of
plant cuticle and stalk, being the final waste product after redigestion of
soft pellets. These are only released outside the burrow and are not
reingested. Soft pellets are usually produced several hours after grazing,
after the hard pellets have all been excreted. They are made up of
micro-organisms and undigested plant cell walls.
The chewed plant material collects in the large cecum,
a secondary chamber between the large and small intestine containing large
quantities of symbiotic bacteria that help with the digestion of cellulose and
also produce certain B vitamins. The pellets are about 56% bacteria by dry
weight, largely accounting for the pellets being 24.4% protein on average.
These pellets remain intact for up to six hours in the stomach; the bacteria
within continue to digest the plant carbohydrates. The soft feces form here and
contain up to five times the vitamins of hard feces. After being excreted, they
are eaten whole by the rabbit and redigested in a special part of the stomach.
This double-digestion process enables rabbits to use nutrients that they may
have missed (Verbal
Sentence) during the first passage through the gut, as well as the
nutrients formed by the microbial activity and thus ensures that maximum
nutrition is derived from the food they eat. This process serves the same
purpose within the rabbit as rumination does
in cattle and sheep.
Differences
from hares
The most obvious difference between rabbits and hares
is how their kits are born. Rabbits are altricial, having
young that are born blind and hairless. In contrast, hares are born with hair
and are able to see (precocial). All
rabbits except cottontail rabbits live
underground in burrows or
warrens, while hares live in simple nests above the ground (as do cottontail
rabbits), and usually do not live in groups. Hares are generally larger than
rabbits, with longer ears, larger and longer hind legs and have black markings
on their fur. Hares have not been (Non Verbal Sentence) domesticated,
while European rabbitsare both raised for meat and kept as pets.
Environmental
problems
Rabbits have been a source (Non Verbal Sentence) of
environmental problems when introduced into the wild by humans. As a result of
their appetites, and the rate at which they breed, feral rabbit depredation can be problematic for
agriculture. Gassing, barriers (fences), shooting, snaring, and ferreting have been used (Non Verbal Sentence) to control
rabbit populations, but the most effective measures are diseases such as myxomatosis (myxo
or mixi, colloquially) and calicivirus. In Europe, where rabbits are farmed on a large
scale, they are protected against myxomatosis and calicivirus with a genetically modified virus. The virus was developed in Spain, and is beneficial
to rabbit farmers. If it were to make its way into wild populations in areas
such as Australia, it could create a population boom, as those diseases are the
most serious threats to rabbit survival. Rabbits in Australia and New Zealand
are considered to be such a pest that land owners are legally obliged to
control them.
Other fictional rabbits
The
rabbit as trickster appears in American popular culture;
for example the Br'er Rabbit character from African-American
folktales and Disneyanimation;
and the Warner Bros. cartoon character Bugs Bunny.
Anthropomorphized
rabbits have appeared (Verbal Sentence) in a host of works of film,
literature, and technology, notably the White Rabbit and the March Hare in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; in the popular novels Watership Down, by Richard Adams (which has also been made into a movie)
and Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson,
as well as in Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit stories.
Urban legends
It
was commonly believed that pregnancy tests were based on the idea that a rabbit
would die if injected with a pregnant woman's urine.
This is not true. However, in the 1920s it was discovered that if the urine
contained the hCG,
a hormone found in the bodies of pregnant women, the rabbit would display
ovarian changes. The rabbit would then be killed to have its ovaries inspected, but the death of the rabbit
was not the indicator of the results. Later revisions of the test allowed technicians to inspect the
ovaries without killing the animal. A similar test involved injecting Xenopus frogs to make them lay eggs, but animal
tests for pregnancy have been made (Non Verbal Sentence) obsolete by faster,
cheaper, and simpler modern methods.
TIGER
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is
the largest cat species, reaching a
total body length of up to 3.3 metres (11 ft) and weighing up to
306 kg (670 lb). Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark
vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts. They have
exceptionally stout teeth (Verbal Sentence), and theircanines are
the longest among living felids with a crown height
of as much as 74.5 mm (2.93 in) or even 90 mm
(3.5 in). In zoos, tigers have lived (Verbal Sentence) for 20 to 26
years, which also seems to be their longevity in the wild. They are territorial
and generally solitary but social animals, often requiring large contiguous areas
of habitat that support their prey requirements. This, coupled with the fact
that they are indigenous to some of the more densely populated places on Earth,
has caused significant conflicts with humans.
Tigers once ranged widely across Asia, from Turkey in the west to the eastern coast of Russia. Over the past 100 years, they have lost 93% of their
historic range, and have been extirpated from southwest and central Asia, from
the islands of Java and Bali, and from
large areas of Southeast andEastern Asia. Today,
they range from the Siberian taiga to open grasslands and
tropical mangrove swamps.
The remaining six tiger subspecies have been classified (Non Verbal Sentence) as endangered by IUCN. The global population in the wild is estimated to
number between 3,062 to 3,948 individuals, with most remaining populations
occurring in small pockets that are isolated from each other. Major reasons for
population decline include habitat destruction,habitat fragmentation and poaching. The
extent of area occupied by tigers is estimated at less than 1,184,911 km²
(457,497 sq mi), a 41% decline from the area estimated in the mid-1990s.
Tigers are among the most recognisable and popular of
the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured (Verbal Sentence) prominently in
ancient mythology andfolklore, and
continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on
many flags, coats of arms, and
as mascots for
sporting teams. The Bengal tiger is
the national animal of Bangladesh and India.
Characteristics
and evolution
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found (Non Verbal Sentence) in China and
Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of
the Pleistocene, and was
smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from
Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the
early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and
Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera
tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known from
fossils found at Trinil in Java.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the
late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils
found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies,
smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which
body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or
perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers
also lived in Borneo, as well as
on the island of Palawan in
the Philippines.
Hybrids
Hybridisation among the big cats, including the tiger,
was first conceptualised in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly
interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known (Non Verbal Sentence) to breed with
tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies)
to createhybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos,
but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and
subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a
tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the
corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than
either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent
species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often
fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do,
their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers
are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and
1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness
and the male tiger.
Colour
variations
White tigers
There is a well-known allele that produces the white tiger,
technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is
rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of
white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as
the trait is recessive). Many
initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to
remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has
led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical
defects, such as cleft palates andscoliosis (curvature
of the spine). Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a
condition known as strabismus). Even
apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange
counterparts. Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th
century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in
white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every
10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour
variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed (Non Verbal
Sentence) in the wild have been Bengal tigers (and all white tigers
in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the
recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by
Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Nor are they in any
way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common
misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite
the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are
distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes.
Distribution
and habitat
In the past, tigers were found throughout Asia, from
the Caucasus and
the Caspian Sea to Siberia and
the Indonesian islands
of Java, Bali and Sumatra. During the
20th century, tigers have been extirpated (Non Verbal Sentence) in western Asia and
became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range.
Today, their fragmented and partly degraded range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia. The
northern limit of their range is close to the Amur River in
south eastern Siberia. The only
large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra.
Tigers were extirpated on the island of Bali in the
1940s, around the Caspian Sea in the 1970s, and on Java in the 1980s. Loss of
habitat and the persistent killing of tigers and tiger prey precipitated these
extirpations, a process that continues to leave forests devoid of tigers and
other large mammals across South and Southeast Asia. Since the beginning of the
21st century, their historical range has shrunk by 93%. In the decade from 1997
to 2007, the estimated area known to be occupied by tigers has declined by 41%.
Fossil remains
indicate that tigers were present in Borneo and Palawan in
the Philippines during
the late Pleistocene and Holocene.
Tiger habitats will
usually include sufficient cover, proximity
to water, and an
abundance of prey. Bengal
tigers live in many types of forests, including wet, evergreen, the
semi-evergreen of Assamand
eastern Bengal; the
mangrove forest of the Ganges Delta;
the deciduous forest of Nepal, and the thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared
to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage
colouring is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a
disadvantage compared with the multiple felines in a pride.
Biology and
behaviour
Territorial
behaviour
Adult tigers lead solitary lives and congregate only
on an ad hoc and transitory basis when special conditions
permit, such as plentiful supply of food. They establish and maintain home
ranges. Resident adults of either sex tend to confine their movements to a
definite area of habitat, within which they satisfy their needs, and in the
case of tigresses, those of their growing cubs. Those sharing the same ground
are well aware of each other's movements and activities.
The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on
prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A
tigress may have a territory of 20 km² (7.7 sq mi), while the
territories of males are much larger, covering 60 to 100 km² (23 to 39
sq mi). The range of a male tends to overlap those of several females.
Tigers are strong swimmers, and are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. During the extreme heat of the day, they often cool
off in pools. They are able to carry prey through the water.
The relationships between individuals can be quite
complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers
follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For
instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and
female tigers have been documented (Non Verbal Sentece) sharing kills. George
Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs.
Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that
these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male,
suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to
male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill
first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing
kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers
have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is
from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed
by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore inRanthambhore National Park:
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250 kg
(550 lb) male nilgai – a
very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three
14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During
this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male – all
offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one
female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine
tigers round the kill.
When young female tigers first establish a territory,
they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the
female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males,
however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a
younger age to mark out their own area. A young male will acquire territory
either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a
transient in another male's territory until he is old and strong enough to
challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30–35% per year)
amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their
natal area, seeking out territories of their own.
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other
males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most
part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of
intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been
observed (Non
Verbal Sentence), in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by
rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Once dominance has been established (Non Verbal Sentence) , a male may
actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live
in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two
males when a female is in oestrus, and may
result in the death of one of the males, although this is a rare occurrence.
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal
gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when
identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Like the other Pantheracats, tigers can roar. Tigers
will roar for both aggressive and non-aggressive reasons. Other tiger vocal
communications include moans, hisses, growls and chuffs.
Tigers have been studied (Non Verbal Sentence) in the wild
using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the
past using plaster casts of theirpugmarks. This
method was criticized as being inaccurate. Attempts were made to use camera
trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNAfrom their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a
popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Hunting and
diet
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium
sized animals. Sambar, gaur, chital, barasingha, wild boar, nilgai and both water buffalo anddomestic buffalo are
the tiger's favoured prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia
the main prey species are manchurian wapiti, wild
boar, sika deer, moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In
Sumatra, sambar, muntjac, wild boar,
and malayan tapirare preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range,
prey included saiga antelope, camels, caucasian wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat
much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are
too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants
do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has
been observed. Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers
also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and
donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in
contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of
catching their natural prey, have turned (Verbal Sentence) into man-eaters; this pattern
has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where
healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce,
humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Tigers will
occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit
of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
Tigers are thought to be nocturnal predators, hunting
at night.[65] However,
in areas where humans are absent, they have been observed (Non Verbal Sentence) via remote
controlled, hidden cameras hunting during the daylight hours. They
generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering
them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off
balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about
49–65 kilometres per hour (35–40 miles per hour), although they can
only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina;
consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break
their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10
metres have been reported (Non Verbal Sentence), although leaps of around
half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a
successful kill.
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the
throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the
ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. By
this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed (Non Verbal
Sentence) by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. With small prey,
the tiger bites the nape, often
breaking the spinal cord, piercing
the windpipe, or severing thejugular vein or common carotid artery. Though rarely observed, some tigers have been
recorded (Non Verbal
Sentence) to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are
powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the
backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis"
in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through
deep lake water, a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously
witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be
extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in
a kill.
Interspecific
predatory relationships
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and
even crocodiles on
occasion, although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a
crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its
paws. Eighteenth century Physician Oliver Goldsmith described
the frequent conflicts between mugger crocodiles and
tigers that occurred during that time. Thirsty tigers would frequently descend
to the rivers to drink and on occasion were seized and killed by the muggers,
though more often the tiger escaped and the reptile was disabled. Leopards
dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and
hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards
were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or
inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the
savanna. Tigers have been known(Non Verbal Sentence) to suppress wolf populations
in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed (Non Verbal Sentence) to attack and
kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy
losses. Lone golden jackals expelled
from their pack have been known (Non Verbal Sentence) to form commensal relationships with
tigers. These solitary jackals, known as kol-bahl, will attach
themselves to a particular tiger, trailing it at a safe distance in order to
feed on the big cat's kills. A kol-bahl will even alert a
tiger to a kill with a loud pheal. Tigers have been known (Non Verbal
Sentence) to tolerate these jackals: one report describes how a
jackal confidently walked in and out between three tigers walking together a
few feet away from each other. Siberian tigers andbrown bears can be
competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear
cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5–8% of the tiger's
diet in the Russian Far East. There are also a few records of brown bears killing
tigers, either in self defense or in disputes over kills. Some bears
emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger
will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are
quite aggressive and will sometimes drive young tigers away from their kills,
although it is more common for Bengal tigers to prey on sloth bears.
Conservation
efforts
Poaching for
fur and destruction of habitat have
greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. At the start of the 20th
century, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the
population has dwindled (Verbal Sentence) to between 1,500 and 3,500 in
the wild. Demand for tiger parts for the purposes of Traditional Chinese Medicine has also been cited as a threat to tiger
populations. Some estimates suggest that there are less than 2,500 mature
breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature
breeding individuals.
Russia
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with
only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union,
anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were
instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching
again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed,
local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and
logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has
led (Verbal
Sentence) to greater resources being invested in conservation
efforts, an increase of economic activity has led (Verbal Sentence) to an increased
rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the
species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km2 needed
by a single female and more for a single male). Current conservation efforts
are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organisations, such as the World Wide Fundand
the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers
has been used (Non
Verbal Sentence) by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in
the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less
than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Currently,
there are about 400–550 animals in the wild.
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