The tiger is the largest living cat species and a member of the Panthera genus. It can be identified by its dark vertical stripes on orange-brown fur with a lighter underside. It is an apex predator that primarily feeds on ungulates like deer and wild boar. It is territorial and generally a solitary but social predator, requiring large contiguous areas of habitat to support its prey requirements and offspring rearing. Tiger cubs spend about two years with their mother before becoming independent and leaving her home range
The tiger once roamed from the Eastern Anatolia Region in the west to the Amur River basin, and from the Himalayan foothills to Bali in the Sunda Islands in the south. Tiger populations have been extirpated in Western and Central Asia, from the islands of Java and Bali, and in large areas of Southeast and South Asia and China since the early twentieth century. Today's tiger range is fragmented, ranging from temperate forests in Siberia to subtropical and tropical forests on the Indian subcontinent and Sumatra.
The IUCN Red List classifies the tiger as endangered. The global wild tiger population was estimated to be between 3,062 and 3,948 mature individuals in 2015, with the majority of remaining populations occurring in small pockets isolated from one another. Habitat destruction, fragmentation, and poaching are major causes of population decline. This, combined with the fact that it lives in some of the world's most densely populated areas, has resulted in significant conflicts with humans.
