java tiger

vogelcommando

vogelcommando

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
The Java-subspecies of the tiger ( Panthera tigris sondaica ) is extinct but on Zootierliste I found it has been kept at several European collections:
Berlin Zoo end 19-th centuary, 1901 still in the collection
Cologne 1861 till ? / ? till 1968/1969
Rom Zoo no info given
Zagreb Zoo till 1967
Amsterdam around 1922
Rotterdam Zoo 1877 and 1920 till 1931
Tilburg Zoo till 1967
London Zoo no info given
Budapest at least from 1963 till 1971
not a single breeding-result is reported and I was wondering if this subspecies has ever been bred in captivity.
also it would be intresting to know if anyone knows of other collections in Europe which have kept the Java tiger
have they ever been kept/bred in America and in their native country ?
As a last question I want to ask if there are photo's of captice Java tigers because the last ones died at the end of the 60-ties - beginning 70-ties at a time that cameras were commonly avaible.
 
didn't Walkers Mammals of the World have a photo of a Javan tiger in a zoo?
 
I've seen an old photo(postcard) of two 'Javans' at the Berlin Zoo-at least, they are labelled as such.

With the actual specimens listed above in the Zoos, I wonder how many of them had their provenance authenticated? Some obviously, but maybe not all?
 
Pertinax said:
I've seen an old photo(postcard) of two 'Javans' at the Berlin Zoo-at least, they are labelled as such.
Click to expand...
is that the one where they are at opposite ends of some sort of platform? I wasn't sure if they were actually Javans or not. With photos on the internet it can sometimes be hard to tell what is real and what is mislabelled.
 
Pertinax said:
I've seen an old photo(postcard) of two 'Javans' at the Berlin Zoo-at least, they are labelled as such.?
Click to expand...

Chlidonias said:
is that the one where they are at opposite ends of some sort of platform? I wasn't sure if they were actually Javans or not.
Click to expand...

I have an old postcard from Berlin Zoo depicting two tigers labelled as Javan tigers. They are indeed at opposite ends of a platform so imagine we are probably referring to the same picture.

I also have an old postcard of Javan tigers at Amsterdam (Artis) Zoo.
 
Chlidonias said:
is that the one where they are at opposite ends of some sort of platform? I wasn't sure if they were actually Javans or not. With photos on the internet it can sometimes be hard to tell what is real and what is mislabelled.
Click to expand...

That is also the picture I've seen of them. I'll post it below. Also, I have found one from the London Zoo. Sorry if it's the one posted on Chlidonias' link above- that link won't work for me.

~Thylo:cool:
 

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Judging by photographs of dead Javan Tigers killed in the wild which I have seen, I think these certainly look the part.
 
Chlidonias said:
is that the one where they are at opposite ends of some sort of platform? I wasn't sure if they were actually Javans or not. With photos on the internet it can sometimes be hard to tell what is real and what is mislabelled.
Click to expand...

That's the one. Its now been uploaded above. I think wording including 'Java' is printed on the card though you can't see it here.

I imagine the Javan Tiger must have been very,very similar to the Sumatran save for perhaps a smaller overall size. Same could be said again for the Bali tiger- except its sometimes stated Bali/Javan tigers could transfer between the two islands by swimming the intervening Strait,- so were they in fact one and the same?
 
In the article 'A taxonomic revision of the tigers ( Panthera tigris ) of Southeast Asia by J.H. Mazak and C.P. Groves, Mammalian Biology vol.71 ( 2006 ) 5 pp. 268-287' - an article with many graphs and some good drawings of skulls - it is proposted to recognize 3 different tiger-species :
Panthera tigris with all mainland suspecies
Panthera sumatrae with no subspecies
Panthera sondaica with subspecies balica
 
vogelcommando said:
Panthera tigris with all mainland suspecies
Panthera sumatrae with no subspecies
Panthera sondaica with subspecies balica
Click to expand...

In which case Sumatran and Javan would perhaps be more distinct than I suggested. But by this classification, the Javan and Bali tigers would have been extremely similar.
 
A book to get on this subject is Tilson and Nyhus [eds]"Tigers of the World"[Academic Press,2nd edition 2010] in which they point out the problems with the above-mentioned Groves revision[ limited sampling basically].Very recently it has been proposed [not in this book] that the Caspian and the Amur Tigers were genetically identical-interestingly the book DOES mention that in both these forms the skull of the male has a sagittal crest[unlike other Tigers] which seems like a reasonable pointer towards the latest thought.
 
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