Tigers can live in almost any climatic and temperature zone. They can survive in the hot and humid bamboo jungles as well as the relatively cooler swampy regions; the frosty forests and the rainforests of Malaysia; and also the extremely cold regions like the forests of Siberia. The striped beasts can survive almost anywhere.
In the India subcontinent the tigers mainly live in the grasslands, dry forests and green hilly regions. The tigers prefer closed places such as forests and grasslands, which are rather secretive. There was a time when tigers were found in regions that extended from eastern Turkey right through southern Asia, which included the islands of Sumatra, Java, and Bali; further extending to the eastern shores of Asia on the Sea of Okotsk.
However, presently, not only are tigers amongst the endangered animals of the world, but their distribution has also declined. Today, one cannot spot tigers in western India or on the islands of Java and Bali. The surviving species of tigers are distributed in various forest regions of southeast Asia, China, and the Russian Far East. These are also fragmented tiger habitat zones.
Nonetheless, tigers are found in varied habitats, primarily depending on the geographic location. Thus they can be found in regions such as:
- Topical forests
- Evergreen forests
- Riverine woodlands
- Mangrove swamps
- Grasslands
- Savannas
- Rocky country-sides
According to the available statistical information, way back in the 1920s, there were about 100,000 tigers that existed in the wild. However, according to the present recordings and information there are approximately 2,500 mature breeding individual tigers in the wild. There are nearly 20,000 tigers kept in captivity so as to minimize the possibility of this animal’s extinction.