Following a recent visit to Banham Zoo in Norfolk where along with one of my little boys we saw their Siberian Tigers and some news pieces on London Zoo's 'Tiger Territory' I've been thinking a little about Tigers.
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| Siberian Tiger, Banham Zoo, Norfolk |
In 1794 William Blake wrote his immortal lines
"Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night; / What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry"
More recently in 1968 Judith Kerr wrote and illustrated the children's classic 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea', in which a large, vividly orange and black striped tiger visits a small girl and her mother and precedes to eat them out of house and home.
Both are manifestations of the degree to which these enigmatic big cats have permeated the culture of a country many thousands of miles outside their natural range.
And yet at the same time that we have eulogised tigers in poetry and prose and co-opted them to sell everything from petrol to sugary cereals, we have also driven the species to the very edge of extinction in the wild, through over hunting of their prey, habitat loss, and the hunting of the tigers themselves. Indeed we have lost forever the Japanese, Caspian and Javan races of tiger and the Chinese race may not be far behind them in fading from the face of the Earth.
In 21st century London a small girl turns wide eyed to her teacher and says "You never told us they were real". This child until then had never realised that something as magical could burn so bright in her world, somewhere beyond the garish CGI landscape of children's computer games, books and television. Like many before her she had been awe-struck by a life force bundled up in a living and breathing blanket of fiery orange and black fur, that emits the over powering charisma and sheer attitude of a Tiger.
"Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night; / What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry"
More recently in 1968 Judith Kerr wrote and illustrated the children's classic 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea', in which a large, vividly orange and black striped tiger visits a small girl and her mother and precedes to eat them out of house and home.
Both are manifestations of the degree to which these enigmatic big cats have permeated the culture of a country many thousands of miles outside their natural range.
And yet at the same time that we have eulogised tigers in poetry and prose and co-opted them to sell everything from petrol to sugary cereals, we have also driven the species to the very edge of extinction in the wild, through over hunting of their prey, habitat loss, and the hunting of the tigers themselves. Indeed we have lost forever the Japanese, Caspian and Javan races of tiger and the Chinese race may not be far behind them in fading from the face of the Earth.
In 21st century London a small girl turns wide eyed to her teacher and says "You never told us they were real". This child until then had never realised that something as magical could burn so bright in her world, somewhere beyond the garish CGI landscape of children's computer games, books and television. Like many before her she had been awe-struck by a life force bundled up in a living and breathing blanket of fiery orange and black fur, that emits the over powering charisma and sheer attitude of a Tiger.
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| Siberian Tiger, Banham Zoo, Norfolk |
Her first Tiger experience came at London Zoo, where last year the Zoo opened
its new 'Tiger Territory', home to their pair of Sumatran Tigers. Critically
endangered in the wild and at risk of going the same way that their Caspian and
Javan cousins have already done. There is a real risk that the descendants
of these adopted Cockney Tigers will one day have no wild cousins and
perhaps no wild for their descendants to return too.
Tigers do well in Zoo's, they breed freely, too freely perhaps as Zoo's have finite space. But just as humans who have known nothing but modern city living have little in common with their hunter gatherer ancestors and whilst living longer, healthier lives would not have the skills to survive in the wild. So too captive bred Tigers do not have the store of cultural knowledge of a wild home range learned from their mother in their formative years. Or over the generations the brutal pressures of natural selection passing on the genes of the Tigers best adapted to a life in whatever wild there is left.
So, much as modern urban man's basic DNA is the same as that of our hunter gatherer forebears, so too is the DNA of these Zoo Tigers the same as that of their wild cousins and yet both we and the Tigers would struggle to go back to our respective wilds.
Does the loss of this cultural learning matter for tigers? I couldn't practice the hunter gatherer skills of my ancestors but the chances are, I hope, that I will live a longer, healthier and probably happier life. Is the same the case for captive tigers? Where could you release them back into the wild anyway?
Perhaps it is hoped or assumed that we will one day be able to find a way of giving captive bred tigers the store of knowledge and experience they need to lead a wild life.
So if reintroducing zoo bred tigers to the wild is a long shot because there may not be sufficient wild left and even if there is equipping tigers to survive in it may be beyond us. Does beg the question what is the point of keeping tigers in Zoo's? Well firstly we have them and we can either keep them well or euthanize them. But also I think that there are two more fundamental drivers hope and inspiration.
As the little girl at London Zoo showed, Tigers inspire wonderment and awe in the natural world and from this can come hope. Hope that maybe just maybe we can save the wild places that tigers call home and with that a hope that future generations will be able to know the frison of walking through wild tiger country or perhaps just having the satisfaction of knowing that somewhere out there such places exist inhabited by Tyger's burning bright in the forests of the night.
Tigers do well in Zoo's, they breed freely, too freely perhaps as Zoo's have finite space. But just as humans who have known nothing but modern city living have little in common with their hunter gatherer ancestors and whilst living longer, healthier lives would not have the skills to survive in the wild. So too captive bred Tigers do not have the store of cultural knowledge of a wild home range learned from their mother in their formative years. Or over the generations the brutal pressures of natural selection passing on the genes of the Tigers best adapted to a life in whatever wild there is left.
So, much as modern urban man's basic DNA is the same as that of our hunter gatherer forebears, so too is the DNA of these Zoo Tigers the same as that of their wild cousins and yet both we and the Tigers would struggle to go back to our respective wilds.
Does the loss of this cultural learning matter for tigers? I couldn't practice the hunter gatherer skills of my ancestors but the chances are, I hope, that I will live a longer, healthier and probably happier life. Is the same the case for captive tigers? Where could you release them back into the wild anyway?
Perhaps it is hoped or assumed that we will one day be able to find a way of giving captive bred tigers the store of knowledge and experience they need to lead a wild life.
So if reintroducing zoo bred tigers to the wild is a long shot because there may not be sufficient wild left and even if there is equipping tigers to survive in it may be beyond us. Does beg the question what is the point of keeping tigers in Zoo's? Well firstly we have them and we can either keep them well or euthanize them. But also I think that there are two more fundamental drivers hope and inspiration.
As the little girl at London Zoo showed, Tigers inspire wonderment and awe in the natural world and from this can come hope. Hope that maybe just maybe we can save the wild places that tigers call home and with that a hope that future generations will be able to know the frison of walking through wild tiger country or perhaps just having the satisfaction of knowing that somewhere out there such places exist inhabited by Tyger's burning bright in the forests of the night.
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