Caspian tigers in the captivity around the world.

Tim May said:
If you're interested in exact dates, she arrived at Hagenbecks Tierpark on 29th January's 1955 and died there 3rd August 1960.
( Dates again come from Weigl (2005)).
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Does anyone know what happened to her after her death? Museum?
 
I need to dig into my archives if I have still the original report. I remember seeing those pictures, but I'm not sure if I remember it correctly.
 
Pertinax said:
Are the photos of the 1970 skin available?. It says they are in the 'Appendix' but seemingly not visible.
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I had a look on the original paper (on Google Scholar) but there is no Appendix. I'm wondering if the line was a badly-phrased reference to an Appendix of the referenced paper (Baytop, T. 1974. La prÈsence du Vrai tigre, Panthera tigris (LinnÈ, 1758) en Turquie. S‰ugetlerkdi, Mitt 22: 254-256.) but that is not available online so I couldn't check it.
 
Pertinax said:
Are the photos of the 1970 skin available?. It says they are in the 'Appendix' but seemingly not visible.
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I believe this is the skin, I have seen another photo and cannot find now.

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TeaLovingDave said:
I own a copy of that guidebook myself, so I've just dug it up for you :) here is the relevant photograph:

View attachment 696863
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Thanks a lot! There's footage of two tigers in the enclosure in Chicago zoo from 1934, now I wonder if they are the same tigers as these ones. I will try to compare the stripe pattern between photo and video.

And if you don't mind sharing the next page about these tigers where the text continues, I would appreciate that!
 
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Zulfu Farajli said:
And if you don't mind sharing the next page about these tigers where the text continues, I would appreciate that!
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Sadly there's not really much point in digging it back out of my storage boxes - the text merely continues to cite the fact they also had Bengal and Sumatran Tigers from the other extremes of the species' range, with nothing else said about the Caspian Tigers or their provenance.
 
You can find photos online of a taxidermied tiger in the Kabul zoo dated 1992, not sure of the subspecies tho.

As per a UN OCHA report from 1997, the Kabul zoo was intending on buying a pair of tigers caught in Laghman. Pretty sure these were leopards, given how far away this is from known tiger ranges (the local word for tiger - sher, and leopard - pṛang are used interchangeably), but given the fact that Laghman province would be on the frontline of a civil war that very year, I'm not surprised at the lack of a follow up. However if these were indeed tigers, the recent claim of a historical tiger sighting from the adjoining Pakistani (ex)state of Chitral might be substantiated.

TeaLovingDave said:
To be precise, Caspian was merged with Siberian several years *before* the additional (and, I agree, somewhat ridiculous) merging of all mainland subspecies, and for rather more legitimate reasons - it appears that the two formed a single widespread population until the early 19th century, with the differences between the two being the result of a morphological cline combined with genetic bottlenecking after their separation.

That said, whether it was the same subspecies as Siberian or not, the loss of the Caspian was no less a tragedy - it is very strange to consider that they extended into Ukraine as recently as the 12th century!
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Interestingly some Russian sources considered P. t. virgata to be closer to P. t. tigris tha. to P. t. altaica. I also remember seeing a map by VG Heptner of the reconstructed range of the tiger where he connected P. t. virgata to P. t. tigris via Afghanistan and Pakistan instead of to P. t. altaica. On a side note tigers in the Indus plain would've occupied a very similar habitat to the riverine forests of middle Asia.
 
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