TAMPA: Six different sub-species of tigers exist today, scientists confirmed on Thursday, amid hopes the findings will boost efforts to save the fewer than 4,000 free-range big cats that remain in the world.

The six include the Bengal tiger, Amur tiger, South China tiger, Sumatran tiger, Indo-Chinese tiger and Malayan tiger, said the report in the journal Current Biology. Three other tiger sub-species have already gone extinct: the Caspian, Javan and Bali tigers.

Key threats to tigers’ survival include habitat loss and poaching. How to best conserve the species and encourage both captive and wild breeding has been a matter of debate among scientists, in part because of divisions over how many tiger sub-species exist. Some say there are two types, and others believe there are five or six.

Although tigers are believed to have roamed the Earth for the past two to three million years, the current population traces back to about 110,000 years ago, “when tigers suffered a historic population bottleneck”, said the report.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2018

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