TIGER

The tiger is the largest of the Asian big cats and can be found in a wide range of habitats, from the evergreen and monsoon forests of the Indo-Malayan realm to the mixed coniferous-deciduous woodlands of the Russian Far East and the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans, shared by India and Bangladesh.Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears. These spots, called ocelli, serve a social function, by communicating the animal's mental state to conspecifics in the gloom of dense forest or in tall grass.

There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, two of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia,Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:

The Royal Bengal Tiger