The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest living member of the cat family, the Felidae. It feeds by hunting. It lives in Asia, mainly India, Bhutan, China, Korea and Siberian Russia. Tigers are solitary animals

Tigers have orange fur with black stripes, and a white belly. The black stripes usually extend to the white underside. The stripes are used to keep them camouflaged while hunting. Usually, no two tigers have the same pattern of stripes.

There are tigers with different colors. There are sometimes white tigers that have white fur with black stripes, or that even have pure white fur. They have orange or red eyes. Most Bengal tigers have orange fur. The white coat only appears once in every 100,000,000 births. The Bengal tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh and India.

Tigers vary in size depending on their subspecies. Siberian tigers are the largest. Males can grow to at least 9 feet (2.7 metres) long (body length) and weigh about 900 lb (410 kg). Females are a bit smaller. Record weight for males is claimed as 890 lbs (318 kg), but this cannot be confirmed.

Tigers can live in a variety of habitats. Mostly they need to hide, to be near a water source, and have enough prey to eat. Tigers are solitary and they all control large amounts of territory, the size of which depends on the availability of food and prey. According to Tigers-World, a male tiger may live and hunt in an area of 60 to 100 square kilometers (23 to 39 square miles). A female tiger may have 20 square kilometers (8 square miles). According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, a single tiger can live in a territory as small as 21 square kilometers (8 square miles) to as large as 995 square kilometers (385 square miles). Bengal tigers in particular live in many types of forests. These include the wet, evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the swampy mangrove forest of the Ganges Delta; the deciduous forest of Nepal, and the thorn forests of the Western Ghats.

source : Kidzsearch