South China tiger

The South China tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is a tiger population in southern China. This population occurred in Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi provinces. It has been listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1996, and is possibly extinct in the wild since no wild individual has been recorded since the early 1970s. Already in the late 1990s, continued survival was considered unlikely due to low prey density, widespread habitat degradation and fragmentation, and other human pressures. In the fur trade, it was called Amoy tiger. It is also known as South Chinese, Chinese and Xiamen tiger. Analysis of South China tiger skulls showed that they differ in shape from tiger skulls of other regions. Because of this phenomenon the South China tiger is considered a relict population of the 'stem' tiger. Results of a phylogeographic study indicate that southern China or northern Indochina was likely the center of Pleistocene tiger radiation. In 2017, the Cat Classification Taskforce of the Cat Specialist Group subsumed all mainland Asian tiger populations to P. t. tigris. However, a genetic study published in 2018 supported six monophyletic clades, with the South Chinese tiger being distinct from other mainland Asian populations, thus supporting the traditional concept of six subspecies. In 1905, the German zoologist Max Hilzheimer first described the South China tiger as similar in height to the Bengal tiger, but differing in skull and coat characteristics. Their carnassials and molars are shorter than in his Bengal tiger samples; the cranial region is shorter with orbits set closer together, postorbital processes are larger. Their coat is lighter and more yellowish and the paws, face, and stomach appear more white; the stripes are narrower, more numerous and more sharp-edged. The South China tiger is the smallest tiger subspecies from mainland Asia, but bigger than the subspecies known from the Sunda islands such as the Sumatran tiger. Males measure from 230 to 265 cm (91 to 104 in), and weigh 130 to 175 kg (287 to 386 lb). Females are smaller and measure 220 to 240 cm (87 to 94 in), and weigh 100 to 115 kg (220 to 254 lb). The length of the tail does not usually exceed one half of the head-and-body length. Hair length varies geographically. Greatest documented length of skull in males is 318 to 343 mm (12.5 to 13.5 in), and in females 273 to 301 mm (10.7 to 11.9 in). The skulls described by Hilzheimer originated in Hankou.The historical range of the South China tiger stretched over a vast landscape of 2,000 km (1,200 mi) from east to west and 1,500 km (930 mi) from north to south in China. From the east it ranged from Jiangxi and Zhejiang Provinces at about 120°E westward through Guizhou and Sichuan Provinces at about 100°E. The most northerly extension was in the Qinling Mountain and Yellow River area at approximately 35°N to its southern extension in Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan Provinces at 21°N. In the early 1950s, the South China tiger population was reported to number more than 4,000 individuals in the wild when it became the target of large-scale government ‘anti-pest’ campaigns promulgated by Mao Zedong’s ‘Great Leap Forward’. The effects of uncontrolled hunting were compounded by extensive deforestation and probable reduction in available prey, large-scale relocations of urban populations to rural locations leading to fragmentation of tiger populations and increased vulnerability to local extinction from stochastic events. By 1982, only an estimated 150–200 South China tigers remained in the wild.