Embedded Files
TIGER TAXONOMY
TIGER TAXONOMY
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Felidae
Genus: Panthera
Species: Tigris
Big cat genera are classified into two subfamilies: Pantherinae and Felinae. The tiger is more closely related to the snow leopard than other Panthera species. Domestic cats are part of the Felinae subfamily.
EVOLUTIONARY CHANGES
EVOLUTIONARY CHANGES
All living carnivores, including tigers, are descended from the Miacid, an extinct carnivore group from 50 million years ago. Tigers and snow leopard evolved from a common ancestor a little under 4 million years ago. The oldest fossils of tigers are around 2 million years old. There was a common ancestor to all living tigers on Earth that lived approximately 72,000 to 108,000 years ago. The sister taxon of the tiger, Panthera zdanskyi, lived during the beginning of the Pleistocene era.
Over time, tigers grew in size, as they had to adapt to changes in their diets. As the environments tigers lived in changed, and the prey tigers fed on grew and evolved as well, tigers had to increase in their own size to eat the larger prey animals.
Proailurus and Pseudaelurus are two extinct, ancient ancestors of big cats. There are many species of big cat that are extinct today, including the well-known Saber Tooth Tiger.
There are several big cat lineages. The Panthera genus, one of many big cat genera, contains 5 species (shown in orange). Lineage is not typically part of taxonomic names, but can be helpful to understand interspecies relations.
FAMILY: FELIDAE
FAMILY: FELIDAE
The 36 cat species in the Felidae family have whiskers, large eyes and ears, and flat rounded faces. All Felidae are carnivorous, have 28-30 teeth, a powerful bite, and a shorter digestive tract.
GENUS: PANTHERA
GENUS: PANTHERA
Tigers are the largest of the Panthera cats. 4 of 5 species in the Panthera genus have the ability to roar, including tigers. The ability to roar comes from the structure of the larynx.
SPECIES: TIGRIS
SPECIES: TIGRIS
The species Tigris has a striped coat and white spots on the back of the ears. Tigers have acute hearing and eyesight, and can eat up to 80lbs of meat per day.
DIFFERENCES FROM OTHER ORGANISMS
There are only 4 other cats in the Panthera genus, which makes the tiger unique from many other wild cat species. The closest relative of the tiger is the snow leopard - not the lion, leopard, or jaguar (as previously thought).
Tigers share their habitats with many other species. This includes their prey animals, such as sambar, chital, hog, swamp, barking, sika, roe, and musk deer. Tigers also hunt elk, Eurasian elk, nilgai, black buck, guar, banteng, and wild pigs. Unlike tigers, these species are ungulate mammals as well as herbivores.
REFERENCES
Dacres, K. (2007). Panthera tigris. Animal Diversity Web. https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Panthera_tigris/
Dhotre, G. (n.d.). Evolution of Tigers. Pugdundee Safaris. https://www.pugdundeesafaris.com/blog/evolution-of-tigers/
Lamberski N. (2015). Felidae. Fowler's Zoo and Wild Animal Medicine, Volume 8, 467–476. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-4557-7397-8.00047-5
Luo, S. J., Kim, J. H., Johnson, W. E., van der Walt, J., Martenson, J., Yuhki, N., Miquelle, D. G., Uphyrkina, O., Goodrich, J. M., Quigley, H. B., Tilson, R., Brady, G., Martelli, P., Subramaniam, V., McDougal, C., Hean, S., Huang, S. Q., Pan, W., Karanth, U. K., Sunquist, M., … O'Brien, S. J. (2004). Phylogeography and Genetic Ancestry of Tigers (Panthera tigris). PLoS biology, 2(12), e442. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020442
Lynam, A., Miquelle, D., Wibisono, H., Kawanishi, K., Pattanavibool, A., Htun, S., Tempa, T., Karki, J., Jhala, Y., & Karanth, U. (2015). Panthera tigris. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/15955/50659951
Tigers-World. (2014, January 16). Tiger Evolution. Tigers-World. https://www.tigers-world.com/tiger-evolution/
Xue, H.-R., Yamaguchi, N., Driscoll, C. A., Han, Y., Bar-Hal, G. K., Zhuang, Y., Mazak, J. H., Macdonald, D. W., O’Brien, S. J., & Luo, S.-J. (2015). Genetic Ancestry of the Extinct Javan and Bali Tigers. Journal of Heredity, 106(3), 247–257. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/esv002
IMAGES
Allofs, T. (n.d.). Untitled image of tiger [Online image]. WWF. https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/tiger
BigCatsWildCats. (2022). Big Cat Lineage [Online image]. BigCatsWildCats.com. https://bigcatswildcats.com/big-cats/big-cats-biological-classification/
BigCatsWildCats. (2022). Big Cats Scientific Classification [Online image]. BigCatsWildCats.com. https://bigcatswildcats.com/big-cats/big-cats-biological-classification/
IOP Publishing LTD. (n.d.) Figure 3.1 [Online image]. https://www.pugdundeesafaris.com/blog/evolution-of-tigers/
Cite this page:
Morgan, M. I. C. (2022, July 17). Evolution. Tigers. https://sites.google.com/unity.edu/tigers/evolution
Page updated
Report abuse