King of the Cats It is both beautiful and terrible. It stalks its prey silently, but defends its kills with a fearsome roar. Its face looks as harmless as a house cat's on cereal boxes and plush toys, while in the wild it makes half-ton mammals flee for their lives. Outside of circuses and zoos, it is a foreign to the Western hemisphere as the kangaroo. And yet the magnificent tiger has found its way into our hearts. Panthera tigris is the largest of the 38 cat species -- more massive even than the lion, the so-called king of the beasts. Despite a popular misconception, it did not evolve from the extinct Smilodon, or "saber-toothed tiger." The modern tiger originated in eastern Asia about two million years ago, and from there spread to central Asia, the Russian Far East, India and the islands of Indonesia. Today tiger inhabit many of these same areas, but in dramatically fewer numbers. There may have been more than 100,000 tigers in the wild in 1900. A century later, that number is probably between 5,000 and 7,000. Hunting, habitat destruction and dwindling prey have pushed the wild tiger to the brink of extinction. As recently as the 1990s, many people believed it would not survive into the new millennium. But survive it has, thanks to the work of scientists, park rangers, government officials and conservationists around the world -- in India, China, Indonesia and Russia, and in many countries where wild tigers have never roamed. Of course, this is an animal that can kill prey four times its size. No one really expected it would go down without a fight. Excerpted from Tiger Rescue: Changing the Future for Endangered Wildlife by Dan Bortolotti All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
