Valentine’s Day will be here before we know it and we wanted to help you celebrate your love for all cats big and small with our The Tiniest Tiger Valentine Cards for Cat Lovers. Annie, Eddie and I created a few new designs and we included our all time favorite lion cub card too.
The winner will be able to select the design they like best. We created 5 cards to choose from and we hope you like the cards. Annie hopes they make you feel warm and fuzzy.
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the world’s most favorite animal according to a survey carried out by Animal Planet. This poll of more than 50,000 people in 73 countries chose the tiger, the world’s largest and most threatened with extinction of the big cats. When asked to explain the overwhelming appeal of the tiger, Dr. Candy d’Sa, an animal behaviorist, said: “We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding o the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside.”
The tiger’s win was greeted with hope by conservationists because if people are choosing the tiger as their favorite animal, they surely will do what is needed to ensure their survival. But the tiger has vanished from 93% of their historic range. And down from 100,000 wild tigers 100 years ago to fewer than 3,200 remain in the wild today. Will we do what is needed to endure the tiger’s survival? Here are 3 simple tings you can do to help save wild tigers.
The toilet paper on your grocery store shelves may have a direct impact on the 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild. Image courtesy of WWF. Please buy only FSC- certified and recycled fiber paper products.
Gracey’s Promise
The Tiger (Panthera tigris) is our world’s largest cat and is also the cat most threatened with extinction. Just 100 years ago, there were as many as 100,000 wild tigers living in Asia but today fewer than 3,200 remain.
We have already lost three of the subspecies to extinction in the last 80 years; the Javan, last recorded in the 1970′s, the Caspian, lost in the 1950′s and the Bali lost in the 1930′s. Of the six remaining, the South China subspecies is thought to be extinct in the wild. There have been no signs of this tigers in the wild over the last 10 years. The Bengal, Indochinese, Sumatran, Siberian and Malayan are the only remaining wild tigers and are fighting to survive in just 7% of their historic range. Tigers only live in 13 Asian countries now having gone extinct in 11 countries already.
A group of Indonesian men spent four days trapped in a tree while Sumatran tigers paced in circles around the tree. The men were hunting
English: Sumatran Tiger (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
for rare wood used to make incense but this is not what provoked the tigers. These men accidentally killed a tiger cub in a trap set to catch antelope and deer for food. The tigers were relentless seeking revenge killing a sixth man and waiting for the remaining five to come down from the tree.
A team of 30 rescuers, including police and soldiers, dispatched to help the men deep in the jungle in the north of Sumatra arrived to find the critically endangered tigers still circling the tree. This team did not dare approach, but called in three local animal tamers. Eventually the tigers left the tree and the men were rescued.
This took place in Sumatra, home of the Sumatran tiger, where cases of animal-human conflict are increasing due to extensive logging chewing up the big cats’ natural habitat. The Sumatran tiger is the world’s smallest tiger and the team of 30 rescuers would not approach the tigers without an additional team of animal trainers skilled at diverting the tigers’ attention. And this happened in Sumatra, where both the tigers and the first responders both live.
First responders bear the burden of the big cat crisis in the United States too but this country is not home to wild tigers. There are an estimated 10,000- 20,000 big cats kept as pets in backyards, basements and roadside zoos throughout the United States. Sadly, the U.S. is thought to be home to more captive tigers than are found in the wild. Exact numbers are not known so there is no way of knowing how many big cats are being kept in private hands and under what conditions.
Over the last three weeks, we have spent some time reflecting on Gracey’s life with us and I couldn’t help but reminisce about the beginning of our The Tiniest Tiger community that started out on our facebook page. In those first days we talked a lot about the differences and similarities between Gracey and her big cat cousins. One of our first photo albums on Facebook was Compare and Contrast. Do you remember this post?
This beautiful tiger lives at the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium
Notice the stains on her pink nose.
Notice my stains on my pink nose?
Image of Amur Tiger from National Geographic
In the Russian Far East Primorye, a young Amur tiger left the forest with an illegal poachers trap grasping his paw. The weakened tiger was crying out from the pain as he entered the village. The tiger appeared to be asking for help as he walked from place to place and didn’t seem interested in returning to the forest.
Local hunters, came to the aid of the young male, thought to be about one year of age, by calling on the police and forest rangers for their assistance. The tiger was humanely captured and the trap was successfully removed from his paw. Local experts think the tiger accidentally got caught in a trap set for a much smaller animal. The lure of the bait in the trap was too hard for the tiger to resist.
Tiger cubs romping in the snow are super cute. And these Amur tiger cubs living at the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium are no exception. The cubs are six months old and weigh about ninety pounds and as you can see in the zoo’s video, they are happy as can be frolicking together around their habitat.
Watching my young big cat cousins inspired me. While in my heated thinking circle today, I thought perhaps I should feed my inner Amur tiger and venture out to frolic in the snow. After all, it is winter here in Ohio and my backyard is completely covered in white fluffy snow. The neighbor children are all suited up and sledding down the hills and they seem to be enjoying themselves. So I thought, why not brave the cold and pounce around a bit in the snow. So I left the comfort and warmth of my heated thinking circle and I went into the wild.
Lazy Leopard and Gracey
Lazy Leopard and I have to get this off our chests. We are tired of the term Crazy being used to describe humans that love and care for cats. Why crazy? I understand that the words flow, I too am a fan of alliteration. The Tiniest Tiger™, Conservation Cub Club™, feline finesse™, you see what I mean? But why the word crazy? Let’s take a look at the definition of crazy that I copied from my Dictionary (version 2.1.3 (80.4)) on my iMac.
crazy
adjective informal
1 he was acting like a crazy person: mad, insane, out of one’s mind, deranged, demented, not in one’s right mind, crazed, lunatic, non compos mentis, unhinged, mad as a hatter, mad as a March hare; informal mental, nutty, nutty as a fruitcake, off one’s rocker, not right in the head, round/around the bend, raving mad, batty, bonkers, cuckoo, loopy, ditzy, loony, bananas, loco, with a screw loose, touched, gaga, not all there, out to lunch, crackers, nutso, out of one’s tree, wacko, gonzo. ANTONYMS sane.
2 Andrea had a crazy idea: stupid, foolish, idiotic, silly, absurd, ridiculous, ludicrous, preposterous, farcical, laughable, risible, nonsensical, imbecilic, harebrained, cockamamie, half-baked, impracticable, unworkable, ill-conceived, senseless; informal cockeyed, daft, kooky. ANTONYMS sensible.
3 he’s crazy about her: PASSIONATE ABOUT, (very) keen on, enamored of, infatuated with, smitten with, devoted to; (very) enthusiastic about, fanatical about; informal wild about, mad about, nuts about, hog-wild about, gone on. ANTONYMS indifferent, apathetic.
This weekend many people will celebrate Father’s Day so I wanted to share this story with you about a tiger from Ranthambore National Park in Northern India. A few months ago a male tiger was observed keeping watch over two six month old cubs. According to forest officials, the cubs’ mother died early last year from septicemia and the tiny cubs were missing until later observed with an adult male tiger that experts think might be the cubs’ father.
The male tiger’s behavior is unusual because male tigers have not been observed protecting their cubs. Traditionally, the mother tiger cares for the cubs until they are at least two years old. This role reversal caught forest officials and wildlife expert Rajpal Singh by surprise. Singh said that tigers have been sighted in Ranthambore with their complete families, but that this was the first time only a male tiger has been seen looking after small cubs.
Cats know they are intelligent. They do not need to perform tricks to remind the humans in their lives they are smart. And although treats are nice, it is not worth losing their dignity just to get a snack. Truth is, cats will get treats anyway, simply by making “the eyes” directing their humans to get them what they desire.
There is lots of chatter lately about dogs being more intelligent than cats. And as we discussed in our Dogs Smarter Than Cats
Study Flawed series, the article in New Scientist was biased towards the dog’s willingness to serve humans. Now a study out of the University of Oxford claims that socializing led to bigger brains for some mammals, including dogs.
For the first time researchers attempted to chart the evolutionary history of the brain across different groups of mammals over 60 million years. They discovered that there are huge variations in how the brains of different groups of mammals have evolved over that time. They also suggest that there is a link between the sociality of mammals and the size of their brains relative to body size, according to a study published in the PNAS journal (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America). These researchers claim that dogs have developed bigger brains than cats because highly social species of mammals need more brain power than solitary animals.
1) The average dog brain weighs in at 64 grams and the average domestic cat’s brain weighs 25 grams. This stands to reason as dogs on average are much bigger than the typical house cat. What is more important than simply brain size, not a reliable measure of intelligence, is to take a look at the brains information processing capacity: the number of neurons in the cortex, known as the executive brain. Cats clearly rule with 300 million neurons compared with a mere 160 million in dogs. So you see, the house cat is small but mighty!
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