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rfmcdonaldNational Geographic's 1997 Tigers of the Snow is a decent documentary exploring the early efforts to save the Siberian tiger. The Siberian tigers are actually the only remnant of a larger population of tigers covering an area stretching from Iran in the west to Siberia, the Siberian Tiger being almost exclusively confined to Russia's Primorsky Krai (around Vladivostok), in turn becoming critically endangered when lumber harvesting destroyed its habitat while hunters killed the tigers so as to render them into Asian traditional medicines.
The documentary's is well-filmed and -narrated, showing the American and Russian researchers trying to learn more about the species, showing the efforts that they were making reserves and public education and captive-breeding sites, showing the Siberian tigers themselves, of course. While the content might be a bit dated, it's certainly a good introduction to the tigers' plight. Although there now seem to be more Siberian tigers in captivity than in the wild, thus ensuring the species' survival in that sense, I wonder how durable it will be. One of the issues raised in the documentary was the fact that tigers raised from cubs in the wild couldn't raise their own cubs, having not picked up those skills from their mothers. How can you successfully enculturate a tiger with these skills?
The telling thing about the documentary was the way in which Tigers of the Snow showed me, and Jerry, that these tigers were cats. Two young adult tigers were playing with each other, pushing each other around with their paws, the way that Shakespeare and Bart do. At the documentary's beginning, we saw the zoologists examine a drugged young male tiger they were tagging, pushing his lip up to show the same sets of teeth I've seen in miniature on Shakespeare, pushing on the bottom of the great padded paws to reveal the same curved claws that I've carefully trimmed on Shakespeare. The difference, apart from the Siberian tiger's lack of a purr, is that of size--Shakespeare is barely the size of one of the young tiger cubs, never mind any of the adults. Despite all these commonalities in anatomy and behaviour, in her CBC Radio documentary Stalking the Cat, Marilyn argued that of the few dozen species in the family Felidae, only Felis catus domesticus was secure, with a population in the hundreds of millions, the other cat species being endangered to one extent or another since they're carnivores with a wide range and frequently come into conflict with humans. The critically endangered Iberian lynx, possibly the first cat species to go extinct in the modern era, has been pushed to the edge of extinction for these reasons.
I wonder if the Siberian Tiger, majestic feline predator though it certainly is, has become too specialized for its own good. How did the domestic cat come to be? Ten thousand years ago, a half-dozen Middle Eastern wildcats took advantage of some early human settlements' pests, the humans observed that these self-domesticating animals weren't of a size that could seriously hurt them and decided to accept them, and a wonderful relation began> Domestic cats have done well out of their partnership with humans, the species being transplanted far beyond their Eurasian homeland to almost every cat-inhabitable territory, growing in numbers vastly beyond any other feline species, even replacing ancestral wildcat populations. Felis catus domesticus is as uniquely successful a generalist within Felidae as the Homindae family's Homo sapiens. In a world where environments change at an extraordinarily rapid pace, the Siberian Tiger may be as dangerously overspecialized in the Siberian forests as the Neanderthal was in the caves of Ice Age western Europe. as doomed as the Neanderthal, and for the same reasons. At least some recognizable catness might survive in its smaller kin; at least some media recording the Siberian tiger's majesty will persist.
The documentary's is well-filmed and -narrated, showing the American and Russian researchers trying to learn more about the species, showing the efforts that they were making reserves and public education and captive-breeding sites, showing the Siberian tigers themselves, of course. While the content might be a bit dated, it's certainly a good introduction to the tigers' plight. Although there now seem to be more Siberian tigers in captivity than in the wild, thus ensuring the species' survival in that sense, I wonder how durable it will be. One of the issues raised in the documentary was the fact that tigers raised from cubs in the wild couldn't raise their own cubs, having not picked up those skills from their mothers. How can you successfully enculturate a tiger with these skills?
The telling thing about the documentary was the way in which Tigers of the Snow showed me, and Jerry, that these tigers were cats. Two young adult tigers were playing with each other, pushing each other around with their paws, the way that Shakespeare and Bart do. At the documentary's beginning, we saw the zoologists examine a drugged young male tiger they were tagging, pushing his lip up to show the same sets of teeth I've seen in miniature on Shakespeare, pushing on the bottom of the great padded paws to reveal the same curved claws that I've carefully trimmed on Shakespeare. The difference, apart from the Siberian tiger's lack of a purr, is that of size--Shakespeare is barely the size of one of the young tiger cubs, never mind any of the adults. Despite all these commonalities in anatomy and behaviour, in her CBC Radio documentary Stalking the Cat, Marilyn argued that of the few dozen species in the family Felidae, only Felis catus domesticus was secure, with a population in the hundreds of millions, the other cat species being endangered to one extent or another since they're carnivores with a wide range and frequently come into conflict with humans. The critically endangered Iberian lynx, possibly the first cat species to go extinct in the modern era, has been pushed to the edge of extinction for these reasons.
I wonder if the Siberian Tiger, majestic feline predator though it certainly is, has become too specialized for its own good. How did the domestic cat come to be? Ten thousand years ago, a half-dozen Middle Eastern wildcats took advantage of some early human settlements' pests, the humans observed that these self-domesticating animals weren't of a size that could seriously hurt them and decided to accept them, and a wonderful relation began> Domestic cats have done well out of their partnership with humans, the species being transplanted far beyond their Eurasian homeland to almost every cat-inhabitable territory, growing in numbers vastly beyond any other feline species, even replacing ancestral wildcat populations. Felis catus domesticus is as uniquely successful a generalist within Felidae as the Homindae family's Homo sapiens. In a world where environments change at an extraordinarily rapid pace, the Siberian Tiger may be as dangerously overspecialized in the Siberian forests as the Neanderthal was in the caves of Ice Age western Europe. as doomed as the Neanderthal, and for the same reasons. At least some recognizable catness might survive in its smaller kin; at least some media recording the Siberian tiger's majesty will persist.
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