Teach your toddler the animal alphabet or help your preschool child learn the ABCs with the T is for Tiger T-Shirts, mugs, stickers, and more!
Humans are the tiger's most significant predator, as tigers are often poached illegally for their fur. Many Indian tigers' parts found their way to Tibet, where they were widely used for making traditional costumes.
At the Kalachakra Tibetan Buddhist festival in south India in January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. The result when Tibetan pilgrims returned to Tibet afterwards was much destruction by Tibetans of their wild animal skins including tiger and leopard skins used as ornamental garments. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
Their bones and nearly all body parts are used in traditional Chinese medicine for a range of purported uses including pain killers and aphrodisiacs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned. China has even made some offenses in connection with Tiger poaching punishable by death. Though it has been made illegal, China's wealthy businessmen are known to eat Tiger penis as they feel it is an aphrodisiac. Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population (eg. the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms) is of very low genetic diversity and can be of little use in keeping the species alive.
