Siberian Tigers in Oz?

nanoboy

nanoboy

Well-Known Member
My wife and I were looking at our pics and videos of the tiger show at Dreamworld last night (in light of them being on the news recently).

Those cats are amazingly big! Anyway, from what we read, the Siberian Tiger is actually larger than the ones we saw at Dreamworld.

So it got us thinking: are there any Siberian tigers in Australia? ('siberian tiger australia' on Google produces no meaningful results.)

Cheers.
 
No there are not (any pure ones that is). There is however some Amur (Siberian) Tiger genes left in the 'generic' tiger population (either inbred Bengals or Amur x Bengal) in Australia and overseas.

These tigers are major phase outs and are of no use to the global captive population of the managed sub-species of tiger, so are used for display purposes only. However, an accidental 'generic' tiger was born last year at Cairns Wildlife Safari Reserve and is now at Dreamworld.

Zoos which do exhibit generics are:
Dreamworld
Australia Zoo
National Zoo and Aquarium
Cairns Wildlife Safari Reserve
Zoodoo Wildlife Park
Darling Downs Zoo
Crocodylus Park

And ones that I am not sure of:
Mogo Zoo
 
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Jabiru96 said:
No there are not (any pure ones that is). There are however quite a few Amur (Siberian) x Bengal tigers in Aus such as at Dreamworld, Australia Zoo, National Zoo and Aquarium, Cairns Wildlife Safari Reserve, Zoodoo Wildlife Park and possibly others
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Hmm... surely it cannot be good conservation practice to cross species, given that their numbers are so low? They aren't pet dogs after all.
 
The last Siberian died at Mogo some years ago. It had come from Adelaide Zoo I believe.

There may well be some Siberian blood left in generic tigers in this country but I don't know that I would list the ones that Jabiru96 did with such confidence. In at least two of the zoos that he has listed you would have to search very hard to find animals with any Siberian blood.

Siberians are not a managed species in our region. A lot of the hybridising took place back in the days before the zoo community was as sub-species specific as it is now.

Let's face it - if a zoo needed a tiger, and their were no pure sub-species specimens available, a generic tiger would have been just as effective for education and display purposes.
 
Steve's right - that Siberian at Mogo was the most beautiful cat I have ever seen! I saw him at Adelaide when he was younger, but when Adelaide changed to keeping pure Sumatrans he went to Mogo. Apparently he developed cancer of the jaw and had to be euthanised.

Would it be fair to say that the vast majority of tigers in Australia are Sumatrans? Roughly how many generics would be left in Australia?
 
Steve Robinson said:
The last Siberian died at Mogo some years ago. It had come from Adelaide Zoo I believe.

There may well be some Siberian blood left in generic tigers in this country but I don't know that I would list the ones that Jabiru96 did with such confidence. In at least two of the zoos that he has listed you would have to search very hard to find animals with any Siberian blood.

Siberians are not a managed species in our region. A lot of the hybridising took place back in the days before the zoo community was as sub-species specific as it is now.

Let's face it - if a zoo needed a tiger, and their were no pure sub-species specimens available, a generic tiger would have been just as effective for education and display purposes.
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Sorry, I couldn't post a proper answer as I am on my phone. I apologise that my post wasn't initially clear enough but I was meant to add that I listed some/most of the zoos in Aus with 'generic' tigers, whether they have Amur blood or not.

Sorry for the confusion.
 
Let's up the ante a bit.

Are Bengals and Sumatrans the only tigers in Australian zoos? What about the other sub species like the Indochinese, Malayan and South China? Currently or historically exhibited in Oz? What about the extinct sub species?
 
nanoboy said:
Let's up the ante a bit.

Are Bengals and Sumatrans the only tigers in Australian zoos? What about the other sub species like the Indochinese, Malayan and South China? Currently or historically exhibited in Oz? What about the extinct sub species?
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Yes potentially all the above. I say that because tigers like many other Asian animals coming into Australian zoos would often have come via Singapore dealers. In fact I wonder if many Bengal tigers as such came to Australia. Maybe zoo records can tell, or perhaps Steve knows. But even if they were , it is unlikely that anybody would have taken much notice. 40 years ago if my memory serves me right tigers were all "Indian Tigers" and that was it.

However I doubt if many if any Siberian tigers contributed to the Australian generic tiger. I say that because there were no strong trade or shipping links between Australia and their natural habitat, making importation difficult.

The Siberian tiger breeding programs didn't start till about 1985, and so it wasn't to around then that zoos started to think about breeding tigers as subspecies.
 
MRJ said:
However I doubt if many if any Siberian tigers contributed to the Australian generic tiger. I say that because there were no strong trade or shipping links between Australia and their natural habitat, making importation difficult.
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The only way I could think of is via generics coming in from the US (such as Mohan at Dreamworld) or possibly Europe, where there are a fair amount of Amurs.
 
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Jabiru96 said:
No there are not (any pure ones that is). There is however some Amur (Siberian) Tiger genes left in the 'generic' tiger population (either inbred Bengals or Amur x Bengal) in Australia and overseas.

These tigers are major phase outs and are of no use to the global captive population of the managed sub-species of tiger, so are used for display purposes only. However, an accidental 'generic' tiger was born last year at Cairns Wildlife Safari Reserve and is now at Dreamworld.

Zoos which do exhibit generics are:
Dreamworld
Australia Zoo
National Zoo and Aquarium
Cairns Wildlife Safari Reserve
Zoodoo Wildlife Park
(Taronga) Western Plains Zoo

And ones that I am not sure of:
Mogo Zoo
Crocodylus Park
Click to expand...

Darling Downs Zoo has one generic as also does Crocodylus Park and, I think, Mogo has one left as well. There are also some in non-zoo hands.
 
Steve Robinson said:
Darling Downs Zoo has one generic as also does Crocodylus Park and, I think, Mogo has one left as well. There are also some in non-zoo hands.
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I wonder - is the generic population still reproductively viable for another couple of generations? At this stage there are fewer Sumatrans than there are places for tigers, most obviously those at non-ZAA institutions.
 
MRJ said:
Yes potentially all the above. I say that because tigers like many other Asian animals coming into Australian zoos would often have come via Singapore dealers. In fact I wonder if many Bengal tigers as such came to Australia. Maybe zoo records can tell, or perhaps Steve knows. But even if they were , it is unlikely that anybody would have taken much notice. 40 years ago if my memory serves me right tigers were all "Indian Tigers" and that was it.

However I doubt if many if any Siberian tigers contributed to the Australian generic tiger. I say that because there were no strong trade or shipping links between Australia and their natural habitat, making importation difficult.

The Siberian tiger breeding programs didn't start till about 1985, and so it wasn't to around then that zoos started to think about breeding tigers as subspecies.
Click to expand...

I doubt that are many [any] pure Bengals in zoos anywhere in the world other than India.

Most imported tigers post WW2 came from dealers such as de Sousa in Singapore. A few came out of Thailand direct but not many. As MRJ says, they were all "Indian" tigers in those days and nobody paid much attention to subspecies. If it had stripes it was a tiger and you bred it with another tiger. Remember though, that was over 60 years ago - we didn't know then what we know now.

As Ara said, the Siberians are magnificent. For a long while nobody cared about them in Australia, partly because of the comparative difficulty in sourcing them and partly because they were considered unsuitable for this region because of our climate compared to their region of origin. I have no knowledge of the origin of the Adelaide/Mogo Siberian. Does anybody know where he came from and why he was in Australia?

You can certainly see the Siberian influence in some of Dreamworld's old imports. The magnificent Mohan is a classic example. It will be a very sad day for tiger lovers when he dies.
 
I read that China has about 6,000 tigers in captivity. I wonder if they are degenerating into generics? After all, Chinese medicine and recipes for making wine from tiger bones probably are not sub species specific. Sad.
 
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