Oldest Tiger-like Skull hints that evolution had it right from the very start for the big cat. Click the diagram for the full story.

Canine Distemper is found to the culprit for mysterious deaths of Siberian Tigers

There’s a new postal stamp that will raise money for wildlife conservation, created by the Oklahoma City Zoo and the U.S. Postal Service.

The special semipostal stamps cost 55 cents each, 11 cents more than a regular stamp, and are available for purchase now, according to the postal service. The extra cost of the stamps will support efforts to save endangered animals such as apes, elephants, rhinos, tigers and turtles through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

A fascinating and upsetting view of the conflict between tigers and humans in Bangladesh on the borders of the Sundarban forests. Poaching was recently discovered to be a reemerging threat to tigers:

Official figures show that at least 33 tigers have been killed since 2000, mostly in human-animal conflicts and some in poaching incidents.

For a long time, officials thought human-animal conflict was the biggest threat to tigers in the Sundarbans, one of the last refuges of the critically endangered species. But a startling discovery in February has triggered fears of another kind of threat.

Following an undercover sting operation, Bangladeshi forestry department officials recovered three tiger skins, four tiger skulls and more than 30kg of tiger bones from an alleged poacher in the village of Bangla Bazar in Bagerhat district.

Wild Tiger by BarryKusuma on Flickr.

The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old.

Experts maintain that there are fewer than 20 South China tigers left in the wild, and warn that it might become extinct within the next decade. The first South China tiger born in captivity, aged 11 weeks.

Sumatran Tiger ; bathing by tropicaLiving on Flickr.

The population of the Sumatra tiger, or Panthera tigris sumatrae, is estimated to be less than 500. It is classified as critically endangered on the IUCN-World Conservation Union’s list of the world’s most-threatened species.

Displayed for the first time in a specially constructed studio in South Carolina, these images show the four varieties of Bengal tiger.
“There are only four distinct types of Bengal tiger in the world and they are all in this amazing photo shoot,” says Dr Bhagavan Antle of The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S), who brought these majestic animals to the studio. Dr Antle believes the images give away the characteristics of behaviour, age and personality of each tiger. “Like human photographs, you can see the difference in their age as some of them look a little more grizzled and haggard than others”