Five Kinds of Tigers
Tigers and other carnivores (meat eaters) descended from small mammals called miacids which lived with the dinosaurs about 60 million years ago. About 37 cat species descended from the miacids, including Panthera tigris, the tiger.
There used to be eight subspecies of tigers:
| Bengal tiger (P.t. tigris) Indochinese tiger (P.t. corbett) South China tiger (P.t. amoyensis) Amur or Siberian tiger (P.t. altaica) | Sumatran
tiger (P.t. sumatrae) Javan tiger (P.t. sondaica), Bali tigerP.t. balica) Caspian tiger (P.t. virgata). |
In the past hundred years, however, the last three subspecies (Javan, Bali and Caspian) have become extinct (all are dead).
The map below shows how tiger ranges have shrunk over the past decades. Click on a region or name to learn more about that subspecies.
Tiger Ranges 1900 to 1990
BengalIndochineseSouth ChinaSiberianSumatran
