Research Paper

Richard Martinez

Mr. Skipper

Encounters 8

Mar 7, 2024

Apex Prey

Introduction

An apex predator is being hunted toward extinction. The Sumatran tiger, a killing machine, is being hunted and led to extinction. And the only animals that can hunt apex predators to extinction are humans. Sumatran Tigers are losing their habitat to deforestation and getting poached at the same time. Sumatran tigers keep the food web stable and without them, their prey would most likely overpopulate them, they would eat their prey, and it would keep messing up the food chain. But that’s not the only reason we should protect the Sumatran tigers. Sumatran Tigers are beautiful and unique species of tiger. Sumatran tigers are the only inland living tigers and have adapted to being more accustomed to water; Sumatran tigers have webbed paws. Sumatran tigers are worth saving so we can appreciate them and let them live on for even future generations. We should keep the Sumatran tigers from becoming extinct.

Description

The panthera tigris sumatrae, more commonly known as the Sumatran Tiger, is a beautiful tiger species with many distinguishing characteristics. Out of all the tigers “the Sumatran tiger is the smallest and darkest tiger subspecies and tends to be more manned and bearded” (Sumatran Tiger Facts). Out of all of the tiger species “the Sumatran tiger is the smallest” (Sumatran Tiger Facts). Even though the Sumatran tigers are the smallest tigers, they’re still nothing to laugh at since they typically grow up to eight feet and weigh “165-308 pounds” (Sunda Tiger). The Sumatran tigers also have low body fat so all that weight is bone and muscle, that’s around 200 pounds of muscle and bones. A Sumatran Tiger has stripes closer together and darker orange fur compared to other subspecies of tigers. It allows them to “blend into its tropical rainforest habitat” (Sumatran Tiger Facts). The Sumatran tigers have “mane-like hair growth around their necks and have long whiskers” (Sumatran Tiger Facts). The whiskers of the Sumatran tigers are thick and highly sensitive. They are connected to the tiger's nervous system making them sensitive so they can sense things. They are so sensitive that the “whiskers can detect even the slightest change in the air or wind and so provide important information to a tiger regarding its surroundings'' (Sumatran Tiger Facts). The Sumatran tiger is probably the smallest because of its habitat, they live on an isolated island so they might not have had as many nutrients resulting in them being smaller.

Habitat

Sumatran tigers live on islands and are “the only remaining island subspecies” (Sumatran Tiger Facts). They live in lush forest environments with lots of water. The Sumatran tigers live in the “Sunda Islands in Western Indonesia” (Sumatran Tiger Facts). In these islands they are distributed “isolated patches of the sea-level forests of the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park to the mountain forests of Gunung Leuser National Park in a diversity of habitats” (Sumatran Tiger). Sumatran tigers can also live in “montane forest, peat moss forest, swamp forest, lowland forest, tropical rainforest, evergreen forest and grasslands” (Millburn, Sumatran Tiger Habitat). Sumatran tigers like living near bodies of water since they like swimming. Sumatran tigers have grown so accustomed to water that they evolved into having webbed paws. Sumatran tigers are territorial and typically have a large territory but they will tolerate subordinates “as long as they do not live in too close quarters” (Sumatran Tiger). Sumatran tigers need tall grass, bushes, trees, etc to camouflage. So their habitats have a bunch of plants for them to be able to hunt well, they use this tall grass to hide from their prey since they are ambush predators. The habitat of a Sumatran tiger is a place with a lot of tall plants and a lot of water.

Food

Sumatran tigers are apex predators of their land. They’re ferocious killing machines that eat any animal they can. Sumatran tigers are carnivores with many different types of animals on their diet, which “includes fish, monkeys, wild boar, tapirs, and deer” (Sumatran Tiger). The Sumatran tigers can not only “take down prey four times their size” (Sumatran Tiger Facts), but prefer taking down larger prey. The Sumatran tigers are nocturnal meaning, “they hunt at night” (Sumatran Tiger). Most of the time it’s just “10 percent of tiger hunts result in a successful kill” (Sumatran Tiger Facts). Tigers can go days without eating so it makes sense on how unsuccessful hunts can be. But when a tiger does have a successful hunt “it uses its powerful jaws to latch on to the throat of their prey and suffocate them to death” (Sumatran Tiger Facts); those are some killer moves. The Sumatran Tigers are fast and “can run up to nearly 40 miles per hour, but only in short bursts” (Sumatran Tiger). Because of that, they’re ambush predators, which means they hide and wait for the right time to attack. Sumatran tigers have also evolved into having webbed paws to catch fish and hunt better in the water, especially since they live on an island and there’s a lot of water.

Issues

The Sumatran tiger's “population is decreasing at an alarming rate” (Sumatran Tiger). There are a lot of things that endanger the Sumatran tigers, but the main ones are poaching and habitat loss. Sumatran tigers are sometimes killed to protect livestock but that’s not the only reason. But most times Sumatran tigers are hunted to sell their parts illegally in the black market. “Tiger bones are used to make tiger bone wine” (Sumatran Tiger), and tigers can also be killed for their skin and canines; “canines can be worn as jewelry and, tiger skin furniture” (Sumatran Tiger). Because of ““poach-to-order” coupled with a black market rise in tiger parts” (Sumatran Tiger Facts), it’s no wonder tiger poaching increased in such great quantities. Many “Sumatran tigers live in protected areas, such as national parks” (Sumatran Tiger), but even with that poachers still find ways to hunt these tigers in protected areas. Habitat loss isn't any better though. There is so much deforestation that “millions and millions of acres in forest land” (Millburn, Sumatran Tiger Habitat) have been lost. From 2000-2012 palm oil plantations got rid of 20 percent of the Sumatran tiger's habitats. All of this deforestation “forces tigers out of protected areas and into human-occupied spaces” (Sunda Tiger), making humans and tigers fight, so not only killing tigers but some humans too sometimes. Because of these problems, the Sumatran tigers have been led to critical endangerment; there are only around 500-600 Sumatran tigers left in the world. The Sumatran tigers typically “give birth to a litter of one to six cubs” (Sumatran Tiger), but “the average litter size is 2-3” (Sumatran Tiger Facts). The cubs can’t really do anything when they are born and “depend exclusively upon their mother for nourishment for the first five or six months” (Sumatran Tiger Facts). The cubs are also born blind and don't gain their eyesight till six to eleven days after birth. The cubs have fully developed canines at sixteen months, but aren’t that good at killing (Sumatran Tiger Facts). Sumatran tigers typically only live ten to fifteen years in the wild and around twenty or more in captivity. The population of Sumatran tigers is increasingly going down and that needs to stop.

Conclusion

The Sumatran tigers should be kept alive for a couple of reasons. To start off, we need them to maintain balance in the food web of the Sumatran Islands. If the Sumatran tigers were to die their prey would overpopulate and start eating their prey following the sequence so on and on. This disturbance in the food web would probably cause other animals to go either extinct, endangered, or overpopulated. Meaning that by just making one animal go extinct it could greatly increase the population of other animals. Some of the things that can be done to protect the Sumatran tigers are to decrease deforestation and the expansion of oil palm plantations. The oil palm plantations took 20% of the Sumatran tiger's habitat just from the year 2000 to 2012. That means that they’ve taken at least 20% of their habitats, that's millions and millions of acres taken from Sumatran tigers; the Sumatran islands are also home to countless other animals. They could also work more on protective laws against the Sumatran tigers. Sumatran tiger poaching happens so often that it even happens in protected areas. The black market even started paying more for tiger parts. Protective laws have been set against the Sumatran Tigers to keep them safe from poachers. Even if there are protective laws, sadly poachers still find ways to hunt the Sumatran tigers. For deforestation, there are companies that are working against the most significant palm oil, timber, and natural rubber companies across Indonesia to protect the animals, including the Sumatran Tiger. The Sumatran tigers can also be taken by zoos or places that take care of animals and breed them so they can be helped in coming back from being on the brink of extinction. Sumatran tigers are unique, beautiful, and animals worth keeping alive. Like that if they stay alive that can bring the hope of maybe helping other animals on the brink of extinction. By just helping one animal species in bringing them back, the effect could be substantial in the process of keeping other animals from extinction. Sumatran Tigers are animals worth protecting.

Work Cited

Millburn, Naomi. “Sumatran Tiger Habitat.” Pets on Mom, 2024,

animals.mom.com/sumatran-tiger-habitat-2167.html.

“Sumatran Tiger.” Animalia, 2024,

www.animalia.bio/sumatran-tiger.

“Sumatran Tiger Facts.” International Tiger Project,

www.internationaltigerproject.org/tigers/sumatran-tiger-facts/.

“Sumatran Tiger Facts.” Wild Cats Conservation Alliance,

conservewildcats.org/resources/sumatran-tiger-facts/.

“Sumatran Tiger.” National Geographic,

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/sumatran-tiger.

“Sumatran Tiger.” Tiger-World, 16 Jan 2024,

www.tigers-world.com/sumatran-tiger/.

“Sumatran Tiger.” Zoo Atlanta, 2024,

zooatlanta.org/animal/sumatran-tiger/.

“Sunda Tiger.” World Wildlife,