Siberian Tiger

photo from Lenta.ru

You have to pardon me. I... I love cats. I think they are the top of evolution. Adore their behaviour and their "rrrrrr".

My hubby said me today, siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica ) is on the way to extinction. But I thought, it was not true and began to look for info. Here I want to tell you what I found about it.

This is the most powerful animal. It can trail a dead horse for 500 meters and reaches 80 km/hr running on the snow. It has 2- kittens every 2-4 years. 4 meters long and 350 kg weight ( and he has to eat 40-50 deers a year). It's a good-natured creature. Normally do not attacks people, even his hunters.

One of many similar stories says, one hunter on his horse shooted a tiger but missed. The animal jumped at him, threw down and stepped on the hunter. Looked at him and went away.

Other story tells about a man that fished on the bank of a siberian river. A tiger came to him, looked for a while what is he doing and than went away and entered the river to pass it. The fishing-rod felt in the river and the water got on the muzzle of the tiger but it didn't turned to see what is happend.

They say, there were killed 100 siberian tigers every year at the end of XIX century, 60 in 1912. There were killed fast all adult animals. Than there were very difficult years too. And in 1940 rested about 30-40 tigers in Soviet Union (there are siberian tigers in China and Korea -probably not more than 20). In 1959 there were 100 and in 1978 -200 tigers. Today scientists think there are about 480-520. There were 844 in 1979 and 450 in 2007 tigers in the zoos.