A Michael Broad Blog
For many the high contrast orange and black striped coat of the tiger looks like bad camouflage. How could nature have evolved this highly visible coat as camouflage? The infographic succinctly explains. Below it is some more detail. Yes, that’s correct! Each tiger has a unique pattern of stripes, much like human fingerprints. These …
Tigers’s have stripes for camouflage to allow them to approach prey animals as closely as possible to improve kill rates. Although, it’s quite a subtle question because although we know that tiger stripes act as camouflage, tigers might have evolved to have spots rather than stripes. Leopards have spots as do jaguars. This is …
Yes, tigers do have stripes on their skin. The stripes are actually “in” and “on” the skin. This is because, as I understand it, even when a tiger’s fur has been shaved there remains a small segment of hair shaft inside the hair follicle (and just above it), embedded into the skin. This hair …
There are three main types of variation in tiger appearance: body size, striping patterns and the coloration of the skin and skull characteristics. This post is about tiger stripes. The ground colour of tigers’s skins (pelages) varies from dark red to pale yellow. It reflects their habitat and the humidity of the area where …
How many stripes do tigers have? Around 100 I’d say as it is possible to do the obvious: count them from a photograph. Of course it is not a very precise process as a tiger’s stripes are irregular in shape and fragmented. But if you count the number of stripes on both flanks and …
One question that you might ask when you look at a tiger is: how can the coat be good camouflage? The background colour is orange upon which there are dark, jagged stripes. The orange is quite bright and certainly not muted. It seems that evolution has gone wrong. Tigers are meant to live in …
It seems fair to suggest that tigers use facial markings to recognize each other combined with their body scent (odor). In other words, they use appearance and smell to identify neighbors and relatives. This is how humans recognise each other and, in fact, humans use the tiger’s coat pattern to recognise individual tigers. Tiger …
