The tiger is one of the most iconic extant animals, and its origin and evolution have been intensely debated. Fossils attributable to extant pantherine species-lineages are less than 2 MYA and the earliest tiger fossils are from the Calabrian, Lower Pleistocene. Molecular studies predict a much younger age for the divergence of modern tiger subspecies at <100 KYA, although their cranial morphol...

Conservation investment, particularly for charismatic and wide-ranging large mammal species, needs to be evidence-based. Despite the prevalence of this theme within the literature, examples of robust data being generated to guide conservation policy and funding decisions are rare. We present the first published case-study of tiger conservation in Indochina, from a site where an evidence-based a...

BACKGROUND Cyperus esculentus tubers (tiger nut) are one of the ancient food sources known to humanity. It is traditionally used in the Middle East to stimulate sexual arousal in men. However, there has been no scientific evidence about its assumed aphrodisiac properties. This study aimed to investigate the influence of tiger nut on the copulatory behavior of sexually active male rats. METHOD...

How morphology changes with size can have profound effects on the life history and ecology of an animal. For apex predators that can impact higher level ecosystem processes, such changes may have consequences for other species. Tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) are an apex predator in tropical seas, and, as adults, are highly migratory. However, little is known about ontogenetic changes in their...

Despite being targeted as a conservation flagship species for several decades, the tiger (Panthera tigris) grows ever more imperiled. Debate exists as to where tiger conservation should focus: on protected nature reserves or larger landscapes. We developed a landscape scale, density-based model to assess whether reasonably effective management of current reserves is adequate to ensure the survi...

Whether prey retains antipredator behavior after a long period of predator relaxation is an important question in predator-prey evolution. Père David's deer have been raised in enclosures for more than 1200 years and this isolation provides an opportunity to study whether Père David's deer still respond to the cues of their ancestral predators or to novel predators. We played back the sounds of...

The Sundarbans tiger inhabits a unique mangrove habitat and are morphologically distinct from the recognized tiger subspecies in terms of skull morphometrics and body size. Thus, there is an urgent need to assess their ecological and genetic distinctiveness and determine if Sundarbans tigers should be defined and managed as separate conservation unit. We utilized nine microsatellites and 3 kb f...

A thin unhealthy Burmese boy named Moung Tsan, aged 15 years, was attacked by a tiger in the jungle, when returning from an adjacent hill accompanied by his father, oil the evening of the'Jth July 1881. The tiger caught him on the face and dragged him several yards, when his father, who had a dah in his hand, struck the animal on the head, on which the tiger left his prey and jumped on the fath...

This paper presents the annotation of the German TIGER Treebank. First, issues concerning the annotation, representation as well as querying of the treebank are discussed. Within this context, the annotation tool ANNOTATE, the export and XML formats of the TIGER Treebank and the TIGER search tool are briefly introduced. Secondly, the developments of the TIGER annotation scheme and their realiza...

Naïve red (Lasiurus borealis Müller) and big brown (Eptesicus fuscus Beauvois) bats quickly learn to avoid noxious sound-producing tiger moths. After this experience with a model tiger moth, bats generalize the meaning of these prey-generated sounds to a second tiger moth species producing a different call. Here we describe the three-dimensional kinematic and bioacoustic details of this behavio...