Zoo-EV
Three wild tigers interacting in tall grass in Maharashtra, India

Wild image · Chandrapur, Maharashtra · India

Species Explorer/Panthera lineage
41

Meet the cat

Tiger

Panthera tigris

The largest living cat, occupying habitats from tropical forest to snowy taiga.

ConservationEndangeredEN

Relative sizeLarge

ActivityFlexible

LineagePanthera

Weight75–325 kg

Body length150–230 cm

Tail length90–110 cm

Famous does not mean fully known

Everyone recognizes a tiger. Its living world is much harder to see.

The tiger is the largest living cat and the only one whose body is patterned entirely by stripes. Every individual carries a different arrangement, allowing researchers to identify tigers from photographs as reliably as a natural barcode.

Recognition can create a false sense of security. The species now occupies less than seven percent of its historic range, and even the number and boundaries of its subspecies remain under scientific review. A familiar face can still hold unanswered questions.

Habitat and range

There is no single tiger landscape.

Tigers live in tropical and temperate forest, grassland, floodplain, mangrove, and the snowy forests of the Russian Far East. What joins those places is not scenery but enough large prey, water, cover, and room for wide-ranging animals.

Today breeding populations survive in ten countries, many in isolated reserves surrounded by dense human use. Corridors between them can determine whether young tigers disperse safely or populations become genetic islands.

Tropical forestTemperate forestTall grasslandRiver floodplainMangroveSnowy taiga

How it belongs

Built for this particular world.

01

No two stripe maps match

02

A body built for decisive ambush

03

A swimmer across landscapes

The conservation reality

An icon survives in fragments of its former world.

The tiger is Endangered. The latest specialist synthesis estimated about 3,726–5,578 independent individuals in 2021, yet only around 3,140 were likely mature. The IUCN Green Status calls the species Critically Depleted.

  • Poaching and illegal trade
  • Loss of deer and other wild prey
  • Habitat conversion and fragmentation
  • Roads, railways, dams, and development
  • Conflict and retaliatory killing
  • Small isolated breeding populations
  • Uneven protection outside reserves

What effective work looks like

More tigers require more than guarded islands.

Protected breeding sites have produced real recoveries. The next challenge is to secure prey, movement corridors, and coexistence across the human-used landscapes between those strongholds.

01

Protect breeding populations and prey

Effective patrols, judicial follow-through, and prey recovery give tiger numbers a durable ecological foundation.

02

Keep corridors functional

Wildlife crossings, land-use planning, and connected forest let dispersing tigers move without isolating populations or intensifying conflict.

03

Make coexistence work locally

Rapid response, livestock protection, fair compensation, and meaningful community benefit reduce the cost of living beside a large predator.

From hope to participation

Let the world’s most famous cat open the door for the other forty.

Zoo-EV will not treat tiger attention as the whole mission. Participation can use that recognition to protect shared landscapes, strengthen field conservation, and introduce people to the smaller cats living beyond the spotlight.

Participate in the mission
Scientific sources, review, and image provenance

Scientific review: August 23, 2026. This account will continue to change when stronger evidence or updated specialist assessments become available.