What are some interesting facts about tigers?

• Unlike most members of the cat family, tigers like water. They are good swimmers and often cool off in pools or streams.
• When a tiger wants to be heard, you’ll know about it, gang – because their roar can be heard as far as three kilometres away.

• They may be big and heavy, but tigers are by no means slow movers. In fact, at full speed they can reach up to 65km/h!
• These fierce felines have walked the earth for a long time. Fossil remains of tigers found in parts of China are believed to be 2 million years old.
• . Tigers have eyes with round pupils, unlike domestic cats, which have slitted pupils. This is because domestic cats are nocturnal whereas tigers are crepuscular – they hunt primarily in the morning and evening.
• Despite not being strongly adapted to the dark, tigers’ night vision is about six times better than humans’.
• Most tigers have yellow eyes, but white tigers usually have blue eyes, due to the gene for blue eyes being linked to the gene for white fur. The gene for being cross-eyed, or boss-eyed, is also linked, so many white tigers have crossed blue eyes.

• Tigers scratch trees and use their urine to mark their territories. Their urine smells strongly of buttered popcorn.
• Tigers prefer to hunt by ambush, so by looking a tiger in the eyes you are showing him you know he is there. Now he has lost the element of surprise, and will most likely go find something else to feast on. Because of this, men in India often wear masks on the back of their head with a second face.
• They are powerful nocturnal hunters that travel many miles to find buffalo, deer, wild pigs, and other large mammals. A Bengal tiger can eat 21kg of meat in a night and can kill the equivalent of 30 buffaloes a year.
• The roar of a Bengal tiger can carry for over 2km at night.

• Although tigers are powerful and fast over short distances, the Bengal tiger cannot outrun fleet footed prey such as deer. Instead it uses stealth to catch its victims; attacking from the side or the rear.
• Tigers use their distinctive coats as camouflage (no two have exactly the same stripes).
• If the kill is large, the tiger may drag the remains to a thicket and loosely bury it with leaves, then return to it later.