I'm starting with the (wo)man in the mirror
I watched a movie about tigers called "Two Brothers" this afternoon, not realizing that I was in for nearly two hours of emotional exhaustion. Why did movie executives deal this movie appropriate for children? If I was a kid I'd probably blubber even more that I did this afternoon. I'm pretty much pretty cool with being a human being but after watching this movie I have to say that people are a miserable species. If/when the aliens come down we'll finally realize how we had a good thing and how we ruined our planet.So now I'm sitting here, contemplating on whether I'm going to donate $50 or $100 to WWF. No, not the World Wrestling Federation - the World Wild Life fund. There's only an estimated 5,100 to 7,500 tigers in the entire world left. I'm not going to rant on about how three subspecies of tiger have been extinct in the past 70 years, and I don't want to give a lecture on the evils of hunting to extinction or the whittling down of genetic diversity in the remaining five subspecies or how humans are encroaching upon their habitat because I'll just get more pissed off in print. So instead, here are some fun facts:
Fun fact one: Tigers love the water, and will swim in it.
Fun fact two: When a male lion mates with a female tiger, a liger is produced. Ligers will take on traits of both cats, often having tiger stripes on their bodies and lion manes on their heads. They are substantially larger than both lions and tigers, sterile, and can weigh over a 1,000 pounds. Ligers are only produced in captivity, because the mating habits of lions and tigers differ in the wild. Lions are pack animals, while tigers are solitary. In the wild the chances of a lone tiger sneaking into a pride of lions for some good, good loving, are slim. But, in conservation habitats or in preserves the cats have a greater chance of gettin' it on. (Cue Barry White)
Fun fact three: If a male tiger mates with a female lion, a tigon (scroll down to the bottom of this page to see Noelle, a tigon) is produced. Tigons will also take on traits of both cats. Instead of being larger than either a lion or a tiger, Tigons are very small. Like the liger, tigons are sterile, although at the Shambala preserve a beatiful tigon named Noelle mated with a male tiger to produce a ti-tigon.
Fun fact four: Tigers have individual stripe patterns that are as unique as fingerprints.
Fun fact five: Tigers can be different colors besides orange with black stripes. There are tigers that are black with tan stripes, all white (albino), or white and tan. The white tigers found in some zoos aren't true albinos - more often they are the "white and tan" variety with blue eyes. True albino tigers have pink eyes.
Fun fact six: The largest of the five remaining tiger subspecies is the Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica). The males can be as long as a Subaru outback.
Please go and see this movie. =)
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