ArticleTitle stringclasses 109 values | Question stringlengths 4 586 ⌀ | Answer stringlengths 1 926 ⌀ | ArticleFile stringclasses 57 values | EvidencesAvailable stringclasses 120 values |
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Spanish_language | Allow the common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would ? | null | data/set5/a8 | Spanish_language
Spanish ( ) or Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade. It was taken most notably to the Americas, and also to Africa and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Today, about 400 million people speak Spanish as a native language, making it the world's second or third most spoken language, depending on the sources. Mexico contains the largest population of Spanish speakers.
Spanish is growing increasingly popular as a second or third language in a number of countries due to logistical, economic, and touristic interest towards the many nations which chiefly use Spanish as the primary language. This phenomenon is most notable in Brazil, the United States, Italy, France, Portugal, and much of the Anglosphere in general.
Spaniards tend to call this language (Spanish) when contrasting it with languages such as French and English, but call it (Castilian), that is, the language of the Castile region, when contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan. This reasoning also holds true for the language's preferred name in some Hispanic American countries. In this manner, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term to define the official language of the whole Spanish State, as opposed to (lit. the other Spanish languages). Article III reads as follows:
However, to some in other linguistic regions, this is considered as demeaning to them and they will therefore use the term castellano exclusively.
The name Castellano (Castilian), which refers directly to the origins of the Language and the sociopolitical context in which it was introduced in the Americas, is preferred in Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Chile, instead of , which is more commonly used to refer to the language as a whole in the rest of Latin America.
Some Spanish speakers consider a generic term with no political or ideological links, much as "Spanish" is in English.
Spanish is one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Latin Union, the Caricom, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Antarctic Treaty.
It is estimated that the combined total of native and non-native Spanish speakers is approximately 350 million, likely making it the third most spoken language by total number of speakers (after English and Chinese). Universidad de México Instituto Cervantes ( "El Mundo" news)
Today, Spanish is an official language of Spain, most Latin American countries, and Equatorial Guinea; 20 nations speak it as their primary language. Spanish also is one of six official languages of the United Nations. Spanish is the second most-widely spoken language in the United States CIA The World Factbook United States and the most popular studied foreign language in U.S. schools and universities. , Statistical Abstract of the United States: page 47: Table 47: Languages Spoken at Home by Language: 2003 , MLA Fall 2002. Global internet usage statistics for 2007 show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and Chinese.
Spanish is an official language of Spain, the country for which it is named and from which it originated. It is also spoken in Gibraltar, though English is the official language. CIA World Factbook Gibraltar Likewise, it is spoken in Andorra though Catalan is the official language. It is also spoken by small communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. BBC Education Languages, Languages Across Europe Spanish. Spanish is an official language of the European Union. In Switzerland, Spanish is the mother tongue of 1.7% of the population, representing the first minority after the 4 official languages of the country.
Most Spanish speakers are in Latin America; of all countries with majority Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside of the Americas. Mexico has the most native speakers of any country. Nationally, Spanish is the âde facto or de jureâ official language of Argentina, Bolivia (co-official Quechua and Aymara), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico , Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official Guaranà Ethnologue â Paraguay(2000). Guaranà is also the most-spoken language in Paraguay by its native speakers. ), Peru (co-official Quechua and, in some regions, Aymara), Uruguay, and Venezuela. Spanish is also the official language (co-official with English) in the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Spanish has no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize; however, per the 2000 census, it is spoken by 43% of the population. Belize Population and Housing Census 2000 Mainly, it is spoken by Hispanic descendants who remained in the region since the 17th century; however, English is the official language. CIA World Factbook Belize
Spain colonized Trinidad and Tobago first in 1498, leaving the Carib people the Spanish language. Also the Cocoa Panyols, laborers from Venezuela, took their culture and language with them; they are accredited with the music of "Parang" ("Parranda") on the island. Because of Trinidad's location on the South American coast, the country is much influenced by its Spanish-speaking neighbors. A recent census shows that more than 1,500 inhabitants speak Spanish. In 2004, the government launched the Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005. The Secretariat for The Implementation of Spanish, Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago Government regulations require Spanish to be taught, beginning in primary school, while thirty percent of public employees are to be linguistically competent within five years. The government also announced that Spanish will be the country's second official language by 2020, beside English.
Spanish is important in Brazil because of its proximity to and increased trade with its Spanish-speaking neighbors; for example, as a member of the Mercosur trading bloc. Mercosul, Portal Oficial (Portuguese) In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, making Spanish language teaching mandatory in both public and private secondary schools. In many border towns and villages (especially on the Uruguayan-Brazilian border), a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken.
In the 2006 census, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were Hispanic or Latino by origin; U.S. Census Bureau Hispanic or Latino by specific origin. 34 million people, 12.2 percent, of the population older than 5 years old speak Spanish at home. U.S. Census Bureau 1. Percent of People 5 Years and Over Who Speak Spanish at Home: 2006, U.S. Census Bureau 2. 34,044,945 People 5 Years and Over Who Speak Spanish at Home: 2006 Spanish has a long history in the United States (many south-western states and Florida were part of Mexico and Spain), and it recently has been revitalized by Hispanic immigrants. Spanish is the most widely taught foreign language in the country. , MLA Fall 2002. Although the United States has no formally designated "official languages," Spanish is formally recognized at the state level in various states besides English; in the U.S. state of New Mexico for instance, 30% of the population speaks the language. It also has strong influence in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York City, and in the 2000s the language has rapidly expanded in Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix and other major Sun-Belt cities. Spanish is the dominant spoken language in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. In total, the U.S. has the world's fifth-largest Spanish-speaking population. Facts, Figures, and Statistics About Spanish, American Demographics, 1998.
In Africa, Spanish is official in Equatorial Guinea (co-official French and Portuguese), as well as an official language of the African Union. Today, in Western Sahara, nearly 200,000 refugee Sahrawis are able to read and write in Spanish, El refuerzo del español llega a los saharauis con una escuela en los campos de Tinduf and several thousands have received university education in foreign countries as part of aid packages (mainly Cuba and Spain). In Equatorial Guinea, Spanish is the predominant language when counting native and non-native speakers (around 500,000 people), while Fang is the most spoken language by a number of native speakers. Ethnologue â Equatorial Guinea ((2000) CIA World Factbook â Equatorial Guinea (Last updated 20 September 2007) It is also spoken in the Spanish cities in continental North Africa (Ceuta and Melilla) and in the autonomous community of Canary Islands (143,000 and 1,995,833 people, respectively). Within Northern Morocco, a former Franco-Spanish protectorate that is also geographically close to Spain, approximately 20,000 people speak Spanish. Morocco.com, The Languages of Morocco. It is spoken by some communities of Angola, because of the Cuban influence from the Cold War, and in Nigeria by the descendants of Afro-Cuban ex-slaves.
Spanish was an official language of the Philippines since the early days of Spanish colonization in the 16th century, until the change of Constitution in 1973. During most of the colonial period it was the language of government, trade and education, and spoken mainly by Spaniards living in the islands and educated Filipinos. However, by the mid 19th century a free public school system in Spanish was established throughout the islands, which increased the numbers of Spanish speakers rapidly. Following the U.S. occupation and administration of the islands, the importance of Spanish fell, especially after the 1920s. The US authorities' imposition of English as the medium of instruction in schools and universities coupled with the prohibition of Spanish in media and educational institutions gradually reduced the importance of the language. After the country became independent in 1946, Spanish remained an official language along with English and Tagalog-based Filipino. However, the language lost its official status in 1973 during the Ferdinand Marcos administration. Under the Corazon Aquino administration which took office in 1986, the mandatory teaching of Spanish in colleges and universities was also stopped, and thus, younger generations of Filipinos have little or no knowledge of Spanish as compared to the older generations. However, the Spanish language retains a large influence in local languages, with many words coming from or being derived from Spanish. (See Article XV, Section 3(3)
Among the countries and territories in Oceania, Spanish is also spoken in Easter Island, a territorial possession of Chile. According to the 2001 census, there are approximately 95,000 speakers of Spanish in Australia, 44,000 of which live in Greater Sydney , where the older Mexican, Colombian, Spanish, and Chilean populations and newer Argentine, Salvadoran and Uruguayan communities live.
The U.S. Territories of Guam, Palau, Northern Marianas, and the independent associated U.S. Territory of Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia all once had Spanish speakers, since Marianas and Caroline Islands were Spanish colonial possessions until late 19th century (see Spanish-American War), but Spanish has since been forgotten. It now only exists as an influence on the local native languages and spoken by Hispanic American resident populations.
There are important variations among the regions of Spain and throughout Spanish-speaking America. In some countries in Hispanophone America, it is preferable to use the word castellano to distinguish their version of the language from that of Spain , thus asserting their autonomy and national identity. In Spain, the Castilian dialect's pronunciation is commonly regarded as the national standard, although a use of slightly different pronouns called of this dialect is deprecated. More accurately, for nearly everyone in Spain, "standard Spanish" means, "pronouncing everything exactly as it is written," an ideal which does not correspond to any real dialect, though the northern dialects are the closest to it. In practice, the standard way of speaking Spanish in the media is "written Spanish" for formal speech, "Madrid dialect" (one of the transitional variants between Castilian and Andalusian) for informal speech. . The variety with the most number of speakers is Mexican Spanish, making up nearly a third of Spanish speakers.
Spanish has three second-person singular pronouns: , , and . The use of the pronoun and/or its verb forms is called .
Countries that feature , in blue. The deeper the blue is, the more predominant is. Countries where is a regionalism are in green; countries without are in red.
is the subject form [you say] and the term of preposition (a vos digo) [to you I say], while "os" is the form of the direct complement [I saw you (all)] and of the indirect complement without the preposition [I say to you (all)]. Real Academia Española
The verb always goes in the second-person plural even though we addressed only one speaker:
.
Like the possessive employs the form : . The adjectives referred to the person or people to whom we address have established the correspondent agreement in gender and number: .
The more commonly known American dialectal form of voseo uses the pronominal or verbal forms of the second-person plural (or derivatives of these) to address only one speaker. This is appropriate to distinct regional or social varieties of American Spanish and on the contrary the reverential , which implies closeness and familiarity.
The employs the use of as a pronoun to replace and , which are second-person singular informal.
* As a subject employs: instead of
* As a vocative: instead of
* As a term of preposition: instead of
* And as a term of comparison: instead of
However, for the (that which uses the pronominal verbs and its complements without preposition) and for the possessive, they employ the forms of , respectively: In other words, in the previous examples the authors conjugate the pronoun subject with the pronominal verbs and its complements of .
The verbal consists of the use of the second person plural, more or less modified, for the conjugated forms of the second person singular: . The verbal paradigm of is characterized by its complexity. On the one hand, it affects, to a distinct extent, each verbal tense. On the other hand, it varies in functions of geographic and social factors and not all the forms are accepted in cultured norms.
is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular pronoun, although with wide differences in social consideration. Generally, it can be said that there are zones of exclusive use of in the following areas: almost all of Mexico, the West Indies, Panama, the majority of Peru and Venezuela, and; the Atlantic cost of Colombia.
They alternate as a cultured form and as a popular or rural form in: Bolivia, north and south of Peru, Ecuador, small zones of the Venezuelan Andes, a great part of Colombia, and the oriental border of Cuba.
exists as an intermediate formality of treatment and as a familiar treatment in: Chile, the Venezuelan state of Zulia, the Pacific coast of Colombia, Central America, and; the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas.
Areas of generalized include Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
Spanish forms also differ regarding second-person plural pronouns. The Spanish dialects of Latin America have only one form of the second-person plural for daily use, (formal or familiar, as the case may be, though non-formal usage can sometimes appear in poetry and rhetorical or literary style). In Spain there are two forms (formal) and (familiar). The pronoun is the plural form of in most of Spain, but in the Americas (and certain southern Spanish cities such as Cádiz and in the Canary Islands) it is replaced with . It is notable that the use of for the informal plural "you" in southern Spain does not follow the usual rule for pronounâverb agreement; e.g., while the formal form for "you go", , uses the third-person plural form of the verb, in Cádiz or Seville the informal form is constructed as , using the second-person plural of the verb. In the Canary Islands, though, the usual pronounâverb agreement is preserved in most cases.
Some words can be different, even embarrassingly so, in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms, even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognise specifically American usages. For example, Spanish mantequilla, aguacate and albaricoque (respectively, "butter", "avocado", "apricot") correspond to manteca, palta, and damasco, respectively, in Peru, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. The everyday Spanish words coger (to catch, get, or pick up), pisar (to step on) and concha (seashell) are considered extremely rude in parts of Latin America, where the meaning of coger and pisar is also "to have sex" and concha means "vulva". The Puerto Rican word for "bobby pin" (pinche) is an obscenity in Mexico, and in Nicaragua simply means "stingy". Other examples include taco, which means "swearword" (among other meanings) in Spain but is known to the rest of the world as a Mexican dish. Pija in many countries of Latin America and Spain itself is an obscene slang word for "penis", while in Spain the word also signifies "posh girl" or "snobby". Coche, which means "car" in Spain, for the vast majority of Spanish-speakers actually means "baby-stroller", in Guatemala it means "pig", while carro means "car" in some Latin American countries and "cart" in others, as well as in Spain. Papaya is the slang term in Cuba for "vagina" therefore in Cuba when referring to the actual fruit Cubans call it fruta bomba instead. 3 Guys From Miami: Fruta Bomba Urban Dictionary: papaya Also, just how Americans use the term "dude" to refer to a friend or someone, Spanish also has its own slang, or "modismo", but varies in every country. For example, "dude" is "güey, mano, cuate or carnal" in Mexico, "mae" in Costa Rica, "tÃo" in Spain, "parce","parcero in Colombia, "hueón" in Chile, "chabón" in Argentina, "pata", "causa" in Peru; "pana" in Venezuela and Ecuador.
The (Royal Spanish Academy), together with the 21 other national ones (see Association of Spanish Language Academies), exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides.
Due to this influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a standardized form of the language (Standard Spanish) is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.
Spanish is closely related to the other West Iberian Romance languages: Asturian, Galician, Ladino, Leonese and Portuguese. Catalan, an East Iberian language which exhibits many Gallo-Romance traits, is more similar to the neighboring Occitan language than to Spanish, or indeed than Spanish and Portuguese are to each other.
Spanish and Portuguese share similar grammars and vocabulary as well as a common history of Arabic influence while a great part of the peninsula was under Islamic rule (both languages expanded over Islamic territories). Their lexical similarity has been estimated as 89%. See Differences between Spanish and Portuguese for further information.
Judaeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino), which is essentially medieval Spanish and closer to modern Spanish than any other language, is spoken by many descendants of the Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century. Ladino speakers are currently almost exclusively Sephardi Jews, with family roots in Turkey, Greece or the Balkans: current speakers mostly live in Israel and Turkey, with a few pockets in Latin America. It lacks the Native American vocabulary which was influential during the Spanish colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Spanish. It contains, however, other vocabulary which is not found in standard Castilian, including vocabulary from Hebrew, some French, Greek and Turkish, and other languages spoken where the Sephardim settled.
Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of extinction because many native speakers today are elderly as well as elderly olim (immigrants to Israel) who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardi communities, especially in music. In the case of the Latin American communities, the danger of extinction is also due to the risk of assimilation by modern Castilian.
A related dialect is Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco. This too tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.
Spanish and Italian share a very similar phonological system. At present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%. As a result, Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to various degrees. The lexical similarity with Portuguese is greater, 89%, but the vagaries of Portuguese pronunciation make it less easily understood by Hispanophones than Italian is. Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and French or Romanian is even lower (lexical similarity being respectively 75% and 71% ): comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is as low as an estimated 45% â the same as English. The common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages allow for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would.
1. also in early modern Portuguese (e.g. The Lusiads)
2. in Southern Italian dialects and languages
3. Alternatively
A page of , in medieval Castilian.
Spanish evolved from Vulgar Latin, with influences from Arabic in vocabulary during the Andalusian period and other surviving influences from Basque and Celtiberian, as well as Germanic languages via the Visigoths. Spanish developed along the remote cross road strips among the Alava, Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja provinces of Northern Spain (see Glosas Emilianenses), as a strongly innovative and differing variant from its nearest cousin, Leonese, with a higher degree of Basque influence in these regions (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin , Spanish ), palatalization (Latin , Spanish , and Latin , Spanish ) and diphthongation (stem-changing) of short e and o from Vulgar Latin (Latin , Spanish ; Latin , Spanish ). Similar phenomena can be found in other Romance languages as well.
During the , this northern dialect from Cantabria was carried south, and remains a minority language in the northern coastal Morocco.
The first Latin-to-Spanish grammar ( ) was written in Salamanca, Spain, in 1492, by Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When it was presented to Isabel de Castilla, she asked, "What do I want a work like this for, if I already know the language?", to which he replied, "Your highness, the language is the instrument of the Empire."
From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Americas and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization.
In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and in areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as in Spanish Harlem, in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.
A defining feature of Spanish was the diphthongization of the Latin short vowels e and o into ie and ue, respectively, when they were stressed. Similar sound changes are found in other Romance languages, but in Spanish, they were significant. Some examples:
* Lat. > Sp. , It. , Fr. , Rom. , Port./Gal. , Cat. "stone".
* Lat. > Sp. , It. , Fr. / , Rom. , Port./Gal. , Cat. "die".
Peculiar to early Spanish (as in the Gascon dialect of Occitan, and possibly due to a Basque substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial f- into h- whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongate. Compare for instance:
* Lat. > It. , Port. , Gal. , Fr. , Cat. , Occitan (but Gascon ) Sp. (but Ladino );
* Lat. > Lad. , Port./Gal. , Sp. ;
* but Lat. > It. , Port./Gal. , Cat. , Sp./Lad. .
Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, for example:
* Lat. , acc. , > Lad. , , ; Sp. , , . However, in Spanish there are also the forms , , ; Port. , , ; Gal. , , .
* Lat. acc. , , > Lad. , , ; Sp. , , ; Port. , , ; Gal. , , .
Spanish is written using the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the character ñ (eñe, representing the phoneme , a letter distinct from n, although typographically composed of an n with a tilde) and the digraphs ch ( , representing the phoneme ) and ll ( , representing the phoneme ). However, the digraph rr ( , "strong r", , "double r", or simply ), which also represents a distinct phoneme , is not similarly regarded as a single letter. Since 1994, the digraphs ch and ll are to be treated as letter pairs for collation purposes, though they remain a part of the alphabet. Words with ch are now alphabetically sorted between those with ce and ci, instead of following cz as they used to, and similarly for ll. Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas, 1st ed.: "[...] en el X Congreso de la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, celebrado en 1994, se acordó adoptar el orden alfabético latino universal, en el que la ch y la ll no se consideran letras independientes. En consecuencia, las palabras que comienzan por estas dos letras, o que las contienen, pasan a alfabetizarse en los lugares que les corresponden dentro de la c y de la l, respectivamente. Esta reforma afecta únicamente al proceso de ordenación alfabética de las palabras, no a la composición del abecedario, del que los dÃgrafos ch y ll siguen formando parte." "No obstante, en el X Congreso de la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, celebrado en 1994, se acordó adoptar para los diccionarios académicos, a petición de varios organismos internacionales, el orden alfabético latino universal, en el que la ch y la ll no se consideran letras independientes. En consecuencia, estas dos letras pasan a alfabetizarse en los lugares que les corresponden dentro de la C (entre -cg- y -ci-) y dentro de la L (entre -lk- y -lm-), respectivamente." Real Academia Española, Explanation at (in Spanish and English)
Thus, the Spanish alphabet has the following 29 letters:
:a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z.
With the exclusion of a very small number of regional terms such as México (see Toponymy of Mexico), pronunciation can be entirely determined from spelling. A typical Spanish word is stressed on the syllable before the last if it ends with a vowel (not including y) or with a vowel followed by n or s; it is stressed on the last syllable otherwise. Exceptions to this rule are indicated by placing an acute accent on the stressed vowel.
The acute accent is used, in addition, to distinguish between certain homophones, especially when one of them is a stressed word and the other one is a clitic: compare ("the", masculine singular definite article) with ("he" or "it"), or ("you", object pronoun), (preposition "of" or "from"), and (reflexive pronoun) with ("tea"), ("give") and ("I know", or imperative "be").
The interrogative pronouns ( , , , , etc.) also receive accents in direct or indirect questions, and some demonstratives ( , , , etc.) can be accented when used as pronouns. The conjunction ("or") is written with an accent between numerals so as not to be confused with a zero: e.g., should be read as rather than ("10,020"). Accent marks are frequently omitted in capital letters (a widespread practice in the early days of computers where only lowercase vowels were available with accents), although the RAE advises against this.
When u is written between g and a front vowel (e or i), if it should be pronounced, it is written with a diaeresis (ü) to indicate that it is not silent as it normally would be (e.g., cigüeña, "stork", is pronounced ; if it were written cigueña, it would be pronounced .
Interrogative and exclamatory clauses are introduced with inverted question ( ¿ ) and exclamation ( ¡ ) marks.
The phonemic inventory listed in the following table includes phonemes that are preserved only in some dialects, other dialects having merged them (such as yeÃsmo); these are marked with an asterisk (*). Sounds in parentheses are allophones. Where symbols appear in pairs, the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant.
By the 16th century, the consonant system of Spanish underwent the following important changes that differentiated it from neighboring Romance languages such as Portuguese and Catalan:
* Initial , when it had evolved into a vacillating , was lost in most words (although this etymological h- is preserved in spelling and in some Andalusian dialects is still aspirated).
* The bilabial approximant (which was written u or v) merged with the bilabial occlusive (written b). There is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic b and v in contemporary Spanish, excepting emphatic pronunciations that cannot be considered standard or natural.
* The voiced alveolar fricative which existed as a separate phoneme in medieval Spanish merged with its voiceless counterpart . The phoneme which resulted from this merger is currently spelled s.
* The voiced postalveolar fricative merged with its voiceless counterpart , which evolved into the modern velar sound by the 17th century, now written with j, or g before e, i. Nevertheless, in most parts of Argentina and in Uruguay, y and ll have both evolved to or .
* The voiced alveolar affricate merged with its voiceless counterpart , which then developed into the interdental , now written z, or c before e, i. But in Andalusia, the Canary Islands and the Americas this sound merged with as well. See Ceceo, for further information.
The consonant system of Medieval Spanish has been better preserved in Ladino and in Portuguese, neither of which underwent these shifts.
Spanish is a syllable-timed language, so each syllable has the same duration regardless of stress. Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word, with some rare exceptions at the fourth last. The tendencies of stress assignment are as follows:
* In words ending in vowels and , stress most often falls on the penultimate syllable.
* In words ending in all other consonants, the stress more often falls on the last syllable.
* Preantepenultimate stress occurs rarely and only in words like guardándoselos ('saving them for him/her') where a clitic follows certain verbal forms.
In addition to the many exceptions to these tendencies, there are numerous minimal pairs which contrast solely on stress such as sábana ('sheet') and sabana ('savannah'), as well as lÃmite ('boundary'), limite ('[that] he/she limits') and limité ('I limited').
An amusing example of the significance of intonation in Spanish is the phrase ("What do you mean how do I eat? I eat the way I eat!").
Spanish is a relatively inflected language, with a two-gender system and about fifty conjugated forms per verb, but limited inflection of nouns, adjectives, and determiners. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)
It is right-branching, uses prepositions, and usually, though not always, places adjectives after nouns. Its syntax is generally Subject Verb Object, though variations are common. It is a pro-drop language (allows the deletion of pronouns when pragmatically unnecessary) and verb-framed.
1 Phonemic representation of the abstract phonological entities (phonemes), 2 phonetic representation of the actual sounds pronounced (phones). In both cases, when several representations are given, the first one corresponds to the dialect in the recording (Castilian with yeÃsmo) and the rest to several other dialects not in the recording.
3 Capital and (non-standard IPA) are used here to represent the nasal and rhotic archiphonemes that neutralize the phonemic oppositions and , respectively, in syllable coda and intra-cluster positions.
* Chavacano language
* Countries where Spanish is an official language
* Differences between Spanish and Portuguese
* Frespañol
* Hispanic culture
* Hispanophone
* Instituto Cervantes
* Latin Union
* List of English words of Spanish origin
* List of Spanish words of Germanic origin
* Llanito
* Names given to the Spanish language
* Palenquero
* Papiamento
* Portuñol
* Real Academia Española
* Romance languages
* Spanglish
* Spanish-based creole languages
* Spanish-English translation problems
* Spanish language poets
* Spanish profanity
* Spanish proverbs
Peninsular Spanish
* Andalusian Spanish
* Canarian Spanish
* Castilian Spanish
* Castrapo (Galician Spanish)
* Murcian Spanish
Latin American Spanish
* Bolivian Spanish
* Caliche
* Central American Spanish
* Chilean Spanish
* Colombian Spanish
* Cuban Spanish
* Dominican Spanish
* Mexican Spanish
* New Mexican Spanish
* Panamanian Spanish
* Peruvian Coast Spanish
* Puerto Rican Spanish
* Rioplatense Spanish
* Spanish in the Philippines
* Spanish in the United States
* Venezuelan Spanish
* Dictionary of the RAE Real Academia Española's official Spanish language dictionary
* Spanish â BBC Languages
* English - Spanish - altogether 260348 entries.
* Spanish evolution from Latin
* Spanish phrasebook on WikiTravel
* The Project Gutenberg EBook of A First Spanish Reader by Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy.
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Swahili_language | What was Swahili language`s profession? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | How many years ago was an interterritorial conference held at Mombasa ? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
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Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | What is Swahili language`s last name? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
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Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | How many years ago was it when the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland , up to the various lakes in the continent `s Great Rift Valley? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
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Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | What is Swahili language`s first name? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
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Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Where did Swahili language die? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Has swahili no diphthongs? | No | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Is a third prefix the object prefix? | Yes | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | When is /ref> | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Swahili unusual? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Where does swahili grammar arrange nouns? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | What was the only good candidate in these two colonies? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
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Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Do some writers mark aspirated consonants? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Was one key step in spreading Swahili to create a standard written language? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
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Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Are there today more speakers in Kenya of the Somali coast? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Is / ref Swahili unusual among sub-Saharan languages? | Yes | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
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Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | The pronunciation of the phoneme / u / stands between what? | null | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
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Swahili_language | Are vowels never reduced , regardless of stress ? | Yes | data/set5/a4 | Swahili_language
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated German, Portuguese, Indian, English and French words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992âalthough this mandate has not been well implementedâand declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia. Native Swahili speakers once extended as far north as Mogadishu, Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
and the language was understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. It is still spoken in Oman and the Unite Arab Emirates (Ethnologue) However, by the mid twentieth century its range in Somalia had contracted to Kismayo, Barawa, and the neighboring coastline and offshore islands, and in the 1990s many Bantu, including the Swahili, fled the Somali Civil War to Kenya. It is not clear how many remain. "To what extent these [Bantu] languages are still represented in these areas is not known given the displacement of persecuted populations in Somalia and the small numbers of speakers." M. Orwin (2006) "Somalia: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.)
"Chimwiini and Bajuni, the traditional Swahili dialects of the Somali coast, are currently highly endangered due to the displacement of the Swahili-speaking communities in Somalia, and there are today probably more speakers in Kenya." L. Marten (2006), "Swahili". Ibid.
In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sÄhil ساØÙ: sawÄhil سÙاØÙ meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba (adjectival form) in Arabic (of the coast "sawÄhalii" سÙاØÙÙ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons.
One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer. /ref>
Methali (e.g. ), i.e. âwordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegoryâ. Lemelle, Sidney J. ââNi wapi Tunakwendaâ: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.â In The Vinyl Ainât Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres Methali is uncovered globally within âSwahâ rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.
"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Uswahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.
Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]â ~[ɵ] (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
* is pronounced like the "a" in father
* is pronounced like the "e" in bed
* is pronounced like the "i" in ski
* is pronounced like the "o" in American English horse, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
* â ~/ɵ/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in wrote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced , with hiatus.
Notes:
*The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto "child", nilimpiga "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, , as does nenda (not ) "go".
*The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as , respectively.
*Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo "palm wine", but tembo "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common. Some writers mark aspirated consonants with an apostrophe (t'embo "elephant").
*Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers (the extent to which this is demonstrated generally depends on the original mother tongue spoken by the individual), and are often both realized as
In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location.
::
Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitÄb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'.
A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.
The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".
Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker.
Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").
Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.
The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. See here for details.
Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English. As many of these affixes are sandwiched between the root and other affixes, some linguists call them infixes; however, this is not the general use of that term.
Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.
In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).
:
:'I am cutting (it)'
Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:
:
:'You are cutting'
:
:'You have cut'
The complete list of basic subject prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, is:
:
The most common tense prefixes are:
:
The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are is assimilated. Thus nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially it is also short for ninasoma.
:
:
:'I read'
:
:'You (pl) read'
Conditional:
:ni-ki-nunua nyama wa mbuzi soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
:'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today.'
The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.
A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person, or rather as "the" does in English:
:
:'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
:
:'I (am) see(ing) the child'
The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:
:
:'I am not reading/ I don't read'
Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.
Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:
:
:'They are being hit'
Swahili clock as provided by the Kamusi Project
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live.
This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town.
There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
* Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar City and environs on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
* Kitumbatu and Kimakunduchi: the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
* Kimrima: spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji and Mafia Island.
* Kimgao: formerly spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
* Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
* Kimvita: the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
* Kingare: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chijomvu: subdialect of the Mombasa area.
* Chi-Chifundi: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kivumba: dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
* Kiamu: spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
* Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.
;Divergent dialects
* Kimwani: spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
* Kingwana: spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially the variety spoken in the south.
*Comorian language (Shikomor), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar. Often considered a separate language.
*Chimwiini was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
*Kizigua is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.
There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before 1000 CE. Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century CE, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century.
People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.
After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Whiteley 1969: 80 Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili. Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).
Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.
* Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word simha for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Swahili than to "Upendo" (love).
* In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
* The title of the film Mogambo, directed by John Ford and featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, means "passion".
* In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
* Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
* Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
* The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
* Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
* In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
* The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
* The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
* The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
* Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
* The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
* In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.
* The research and software development initiatives of the Berkeley Lab AMR includes Chombo, a set of software tools to solve partial differential equations. 'Chombo' is a Swahili word for "tool", "container" or "useful thing". Kamusi Project www.kamusiproject.org Chombo Tutorial 07 Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California.
* Swahili literature
* Mandombe
* UCLA Language Materials Project
* Ashton, E. O. Swahili Grammar: Including intonation. Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
* Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? Oxford review of education, 27(1): 115-134.
* Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. Historia ya Kiswahili. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
* Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
* Lambert, H.E. 1956. Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1957. Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast. (Kampala)
* Lambert, H.E. 1958. Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area. (Kampala)
* Marshad, Hassan A. Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya). Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
* Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
* Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
* Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.
* USA Foreign Service Institute Swahili course (text and 95 tapes)
* Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
* Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
* UCLA report on Swahili
* PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
* Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
* Swahili educational and cultural Website
* Swahili clock at The Kamusi Project
Dictionaries and grammar:
* The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
* The Free Online Kiswahili Dictionary: Kamusi by Godfrey Kapinga
* Online Swahili - English Dictionary
* "Swahili dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki
* Swahili - English Dictionary
* List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
* On nominal classes in Swahili
Automatic translation:
* Swahili to English translator
* Swahili to English word lookup
* Swahili spell checker
* Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
* Deutsche Welle in Swahili
* ÎÎC news in Swahili
|
Swan | Does the Australian Black Swan have white feathers on its wings? | yes | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Does the Australian Black Swan have white feathers on its wings? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Do swans belong to the family Anatidae? | yes | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Do swans belong to the family Anatidae? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Can black swans swim with only one leg? | yes | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Can black swans swim with only one leg? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What are young swans known as? | cygnets | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What are young swans known as? | Cygnets | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the Irish legend of the Children of Lir about? | a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the Irish legend of the Children of Lir about? | A stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the Sanskrit word for swan? | hamsa or hansa | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the Sanskrit word for swan? | Hamsa or hansa | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Which album was the song "The Bonny Swans" from? | The Mask and Mirror | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Which album was the song "The Bonny Swans" from? | The Mask and Mirror | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the Polish word for swan? | Łabędź | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the Polish word for swan? | ÅabÄdź | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Which ballet by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is partially based on an Ancient German legend about a princess who was turned into a swan? | Swan Lake | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Which ballet by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is partially based on an Ancient German legend about a princess who was turned into a swan? | Swan Lake | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Are swan birds of the family Anatidae? | Yes. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Are swan birds of the family Anatidae? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Do swans feature strongly in mythology? | Yes. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Do swans feature strongly in mythology? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Is the Trumpeter Swan the largest bird? | It is the largest bird of North America. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Is the Trumpeter Swan the largest bird? | The Trumpeter Swan is the largest bird of North America | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the name of young swans? | Cygnets. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the name of young swans? | Cygnets | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Where is the word "swan" derived from? | Old English swan. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Where is the word "swan" derived from? | The Old English word "swan," derived from the Indo-European root "*swen", meaning to sound or to sing | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the best known story about a swan? | The Ugly Duckling fable. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the best known story about a swan? | The Ugly Duckling | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Are swans and ducks birds of the same family? | Yes. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | Are swans and ducks birds of the same family? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the name of an adult female? | Pen. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the name of an adult female? | An adult female swan is called a pen. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the color of the Australian Black Swan? | Completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings. | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
|
Swan | What is the color of the Australian Black Swan? | Completely black except for the white feathers on its wings | data/set1/a10 | Swan
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. Swans usually mate for life, though 'divorce' does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.
The word "swan" is derived from Old English swan, akin to the German Schwan and Dutch zwaan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). (Webster's New World Dictionary) Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.
The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the babies of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck.
The legs of swans are dark blackish grey, except for the two South American species, which have pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. The Mute Swan and Black-necked Swan have a lump at the base of the bill on the upper mandible.
Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), cygnet with right leg furling under wings, left leg visible paddling.
The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) has been noted for swimming with only one leg, the other leg being rotated over the body and tucked under its furled wings. Cygnets do this from a young age.
All evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The Mute Swan apparently is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill color and knob indicate that its closest living relative is actually the Black Swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidence shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.
Genus Cygnus
* Subgenus Cygnus
**Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, is a circumboreal species that flies with Cygnus Cygnus, the Whooper Swan; Cygnus Bewickii and Cygnus Columbianus (now co-mingled as Tundra Swan) across northern Europe into Russia/Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. It has been documented (The Trumpeter Swan Society) as migrating from Russia onto the American continent, as have both Tundra species and the Whooper. Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant and it has been upgraded to "native" species in several European countries, since this bird has been found in fossil and bog specimens dating back thousands of years. Common temperate Eurasian species, often semi-domesticated; descendants of domestic flocks are naturalized in the United States and elsewhere.
Cygnus atratus and cygnet.
* Subgenus Chenopis
**Black Swan, Cygnus atratus of Australia, and introduced in New Zealand.
***New Zealand Swan, Cygnus (atratus) sumnerensis, an extinct subspecies of the Black Swan from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
* Subgenus Sthenelides
**Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus of South America.
* Subgenus Olor
**Whooper Swan, Cygnus cygnus breeds in Iceland and subarctic Europe and Asia, migrating to temperate Europe and Asia in winter.
**Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator is the largest North American bird. Very similar to the Whooper Swan (and sometimes treated as a subspecies of it), it was hunted almost to extinction but has since recovered.
**Tundra Swan, Cygnus columbianus is a small swan which breeds on the North American tundra, further north than other swans. It winters in the USA.
***Bewick's Swan, Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii is the Eurasian form which migrates from Arctic Russia to western Europe and eastern Asia (China, Japan) in winter. It is often considered a subspecies of C. columbianus, creating the species Tundra Swan.
The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor - Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. A number of prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. Among them was the giant Siculo-Maltese C. falconeri which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri).
Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) with nine cygnets
Swan eating grass
Swan grooming itself
Fossil swans
*Cygnus csakvarensis (Late Miocene of Hungary) - formerly Cygnanser
*Cygnus mariae (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, USA)
*Cygnus verae (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
*Cygnus liskunae (Middle Pliocene of W Mongolia)
*Cygnus hibbardi (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, USA)
*Cygnus sp. (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey: Louchart et al. 1998)
*Giant Swan, Cygnus falconeri (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus paloregonus (Middle Pleistocene of WC USA) - includes "Anser" condoni and C. matthewi
*Cygnus equitum (Middle - Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
*Cygnus lacustris (Late Pleistocene of Lake Eyre region, Australia) - formerly Archaeocygnus
*Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material). Anser atavus is sometimes placed in Cygnus.
The Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species of its genus, is apparently not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.
The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) is the largest bird of North America
The swan is found in the cosmogony of many ancient peoples. This felt artifact was produced by the Scythians some 2,500 years ago (a find from Pazyryk).
A swan depicted on an Irish commemorative coin in celebration of its EU accession.
"ÅabÄdź" (Polish for "Swan") is a Polish coat of arms which was used by many szlachta (noble) families under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The variant here given is the coat-of-arms of writer Henryk Sienkiewicz's family.
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan of Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling who is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting monogamous relationships. See the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. In the Irish legend The Wooing of Etain, the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years.
The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.
In Norse mythology, there are two swans that drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.
In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni river located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic Countries and the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland.
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén DarÃo (1867-1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. DarÃo's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón - "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González MartÃnez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne - "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).
Swans are revered in many religions and cultures, especially Hinduism. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa or hansa, and it is the vehicle of many deities like the goddess Saraswati. It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Great Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter, eat pearls, and separate milk from water in a mixture of both. Hindu iconography typically shows the Mute Swan. It is wrongly supposed by many historians that the word hamsa only refers to a goose, since today swans are no longer found in India, not even in most zoos. However, ornithological checklists clearly classify several species of swans as vagrant birds in India.
The ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered among both the most important works of this composer and among the often-performed classics of ballet. It is partially based
on an ancient German legend, which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse - to which were added similar elements from Russian Russian folk tales such as The White Duck collected by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki . Some major elements (girls turned to swans and living in a lake, and a hero falling in love with one of them) are also shared by the Irish mythology story of Caer Ibormeith.
The 1994 American animated film The Swan Princess is also derived from the same ancient sources, featuring an evil sorcerer who kidnaps a princess named Odette and curses her so that she is a swan by day and a woman by night, until the prince comes to rescue her.
The Black Swan is the faunal emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia and swans are featured on the coat of arms of Canberra, the Australian capital.
Today swans are used symbolically or as brands. The Sydney Swans AFL Team uses a swan as its club emblem/mascot, and Swansea City A.F.C.'s mascot is a swan called Cyril the Swan. Swan is also the name of a character in the film "The Warriors."
"The Bonny Swans" is a song from Loreena McKennitt's 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana (and presumably also the collection of poetry upon which it is based) includes a text describing the roasting (and serving) of a swan as described from the swan's point of view.
Icelandic musician Björk wore the infamous 'swan dress' designed by Marjan Pejoski to the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.
In the philosophy of science, the discovery of the black swan after centuries of only observing white swans, is often used as an example of the problem of induction.
* Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] (HTML abstract)
* The Swan Sanctuary Shepperton,England
* Swan photos on Imeleon
* Swan videos on the Internet Bird Collection
* Swan paintings on Artinthepicture
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Tiger | Is the Tiger a member of the Felidar family? | No. | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | Is the Tiger a member of the Felidar family? | No | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | Are tigers solitary animals? | Yes. | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | Are tigers solitary animals? | Yes | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | Are panthers a type of tiger? | No. | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | Are panthers a type of tiger? | No | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | What do tigers' powerfully built legs and shoulders allow tigers to do? | They have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | What do tigers' powerfully built legs and shoulders allow tigers to do? | have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | What would a tiger do when seized by a crocodile? | A tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | What would a tiger do when seized by a crocodile? | strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | What are the typical features of a tiger country? | It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | What are the typical features of a tiger country? | Good cover, close to water, and plenty of prey | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | Would it be common for tigers to mate in January? | Yes. | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | Would it be common for tigers to mate in January? | Yes | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | About how many square kilometers would be needed to house 3 female tigers? | 60 square kilometers | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | About how many square kilometers would be needed to house 3 female tigers? | 60 | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Tiger | Would a tiger be likely to feedon smaller animals, such as mice? | Yes | data/set1/a3 | Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Cat Specialist Group. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.
The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. Tiger at the Online Etymology Dictionary In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".
A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'.
Range of the tiger including the western part 1900 and 1990
In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains.
The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Van den Hoek Ostende. 1999. Javan Tiger - Ruthlessly hunted down. 300 Pearls - Museum highlights of natural diversity. Downloaded on August 11, 2006.
Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo.
Siberian tiger
Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears.
Skeleton
Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. They also have powerfully built legs and shoulders, with the result that they, like lions, have the ability to pull down prey substantially heavier than themselves. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m "over curves" (3.3 m. "between pegs") and a weight of 306 kilograms, Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. Matthiessen, Peter. 2000. Tigers in the Snow, p. 47. The Harvill Press, London. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks.
Bengal tiger
There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are:
*The Bengal tiger or the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is found in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. It lives in varied habitats: grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests, and mangroves. Males in the wild usually weigh 205 to 227 kg (450â500 lb), while the average female will weigh about 141 kg. Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago However, the northern Indian and the Nepalese Bengal tigers are somewhat bulkier than those found in the south of the Indian Subcontinent, with males averaging around 235 kg (518 lb). Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago While conservationists already believed the population to be below 2,000, Task force says tigers under siege the most recent audit by the Indian Government's National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated the number at just 1,411 wild tigers (1165-1657 allowing for statistical error), a drop of 60% in the past decade. Since 1972, there has been a massive wildlife conservation project, known as Project Tiger, to protect the Bengal tiger. The project is considered as one of the most successful wildlife conservation programs , though at least one Tiger Reserve (Sariska Tiger Reserve) has lost its entire tiger population to poaching. (Archive).
Indochinese tiger
*The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. These tigers are smaller and darker than Bengal tigers: Males weigh from 150â190 kg (330â420 lb) while females are smaller at 110â140 kg (242â308 lb). Their preferred habitat is forests in mountainous or hilly regions. Estimates of the Indochinese tiger population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, with only several hundred left in the wild. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies.
Malayan tiger
*The Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris malayensis), exclusively found in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, was not considered a subspecies in its own right until 2004. The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al. from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute of the United States. Recent counts showed there are 600â800 tigers in the wild, making it the third largest tiger population, behind the Bengal tiger and the Indochinese tiger. The Malayan tiger is the smallest of the mainland tiger subspecies, and the second smallest living subspecies, with males averaging about 120 kg and females about 100 kg in weight. The Malayan tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank.
Sumatran tiger
*The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and is critically endangered. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this subspecies is critically endangered and the criteria used. It is the smallest of all living tiger subspecies, with adult males weighing between 100â140 kg (220â308 lb) and females 75â110 kg (154â242 lb). * (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 Their small size is an adaptation to the thick, dense forests of the island of Sumatra where they reside, as well as the smaller-sized prey. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500, seen chiefly in the island's national parks. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it does not go extinct. Cracraft J., Feinstein J., Vaughn J., Helm-Bychowski K. (1998) Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris) Mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics. Animal Conservation 1: 139â150. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. While habitat destruction is the main threat to existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000, or nearly 20% of the total population.
Siberian Tiger
*The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean or North China tiger, is confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected. Considered the largest subspecies, with a head and body length of 190â230 cm (the tail of a tiger is 60â110 cm long) and an average weight of around 227 kg (500 lb) for males, Sunquist, Mel and Fiona Sunquist. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago the Amur tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and fewer stripes. The heaviest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed in at 384 kg, Graham Batemann: Die Tiere unserer Welt Raubtiere, Deutsche Ausgabe: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1986. but according to Mazak these giants are not confirmed via reliable references. Even so, a six-month old Siberian tiger can be as big as a fully grown leopard. The last two censuses (1996 and 2005) found 450â500 Amur tigers within their single, and more or less continuous, range making it one of the largest undivided tiger populations in the world.
South China tiger
*The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and is listed as one of the 10 most endangered species in the world. www.china.org.cn Retrieved on 6 October 2007 It will almost certainly become extinct. One of the smaller tiger subspecies, the length of the South China tiger ranges from 2.2â2.6 m (87â104 in) for both males and females. Males weigh between 127 and 177 kg (280â390 lb) while females weigh between 100 and 118 kg (220â260 lb). From 1983 to 2007, no South China tigers were sighted. ç»è¿¹24å¹´ååèéç°é西 ææ°åé©æä¸ç
§ç In 2007 a farmer spotted a tiger and handed in photographs to the authorities as proof. BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Rare China tiger seen in the wild In 1977, the Chinese government passed a law banning the killing of wild tigers, but this may have been too late to save the subspecies. There are currently 59 known captive South China tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies may no longer exist. Currently, there are breeding efforts to reintroduce these tigers to the wild by 2008.
A hunted down Balinese tiger.
*The Balinese tiger (Panthera tigris balica) was limited to the island of Bali. They were the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with a weight of 90â100 kg in males and 65â80 kg in females. These tigers were hunted to extinctionâthe last Balinese tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. No Balinese tiger was ever held in captivity. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hinduism.
A photograph of a Javan tiger.
*The Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. It now seems likely that this subspecies became extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The last confirmed specimen was sighted in 1979, but there were a few reported sightings during the 1990s. Bambang M. 2002. In search of 'extinct' Javan tiger. The Jakarta Post (October 30). Harimau jawa belum punah! (Indonesian Javan Tiger website) With a weight of 100-141 kg for males and 75-115 kg for females, the Javan tiger was one of the smaller subspecies, approximately the same size as the Sumatran tiger
Caspian tiger
*The Caspian tiger or Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the wild in the late 1950s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968, though it is thought that such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most part of Turkey in 1970. Historically, it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. The Caspian tiger was a large subspecies and reached nearly the dimensions of the Bengal Tiger. The heaviest confirmed weight of a male was 240 kg. The ground colour was comparable to that of the Indian subspecies, but differed especially in the tight, narrow, striping pattern. The stripes were dark grey or brown, rather than black. Especially during the winter, the fur was relatively long. The Caspian tiger was one of two subspecies of tiger (along with the Bengal) that was used by the Romans to battle gladiators and other animals, including the Barbary Lion. The Romans traveled far to capture exotic beasts for the arena. There are still occasional reported sightings of the Caspian Tiger in the wild.
Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China.
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more.
The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger.
A pair of white tigers at the Singapore Zoo
There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, White Tigers, Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts.
Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers White Tigers, (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Snow Tigers, The white tiger today and the unusual white lion, Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses.
A rare strawberry tiger at Buffalo Zoo
In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species.
Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60â100 km 2 . The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females.
Tigers for the most part are solitary animals
The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: Mills, Stephen. (2004). Tiger. Pg. 89. BBC Books, London
A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill.
A tiger is capable of jumping to almost twice its height.
When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Mills, Stephen. pg. 86
Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Thapar, Valmik. (1989). Tiger:Portrait of a Predator. pg. 88. Smithmark Pub, New York Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. Thapar, Valmik. pg. 88
To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings.
Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty Karanth, K.U., Nichols, J.D., Seidensticker, J., Dinerstein, E., Smith, J.L.D., McDougal, C., Johnsingh, A.J.T., Chundawat, R.S. (2003) Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India. Animal Conservation (61): 141-146 Full text and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild.
Tiger dentition. The large canines are used to make the killing bite, but they tear meat when feeding using the carnassial teeth
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Ecology.info Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers.
Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.
A South China tiger of the Save China's Tigers project with his blesbuck kill
Tigers usually hunt at night. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref> They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. ADW:Panthera tigris: Information, /ref>
When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. Schaller. G The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India 1984, University Of Chicago Press By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. . With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. . Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.
During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep lake water, Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill.
A Siberian tigress with a cub at Buffalo Zoo.
Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3 4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. Thapar, Valmik. (1992). The Tiger's Destiny. Kyle Cathie Ltd: Publishers, London This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2 2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world.
Tigers' extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth make them superb predators.
Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, Tiger â BangaliNET.com Tiger â Oakland Zoo Sunquist, Fiona & Mel Sunquist. 1988. Tiger Moon. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will sometimes defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. Vratislav Mazak: Der Tiger. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage von 1983. Westarp Wissenschaften Hohenwarsleben, 2004 ISBN 3 894327596 However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations.
Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers denser vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Tiger headcount in 1990
Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. A century ago, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the world but the population has dwindled to between 7,000 and 5,000 tigers. Big Cat Recuse - Tiger Some estimates suggest the population is even lower, with some at less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals. Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered. The threat of extinction is mitigated somewhat by the presence of some 20,000 tigers currently in captivity, although parts of the captive population, such as the 4-5,000 animals in China's commercial tiger farms, are of low genetic diversity.
India harbors the largest population of wild tigers in the world, along with one of the highest human populations. A major concerted conservation effort known as Project Tiger has been underway since 1973, spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s, though the reports of the Indian government are occasionally met with some skepticism. A recently passed tribal Bill, which allows tribal populations to reside inside designated tiger sanctuaries, may have impacts on the continuing success of the program.
A tiger census carried out over 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008 stated that the wild tiger population in India has come down to approximately 1,411. It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching. .
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km 2 needed by a single female). Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers. Wildlife Science: Linking Ecological Theory and Management Applications, By Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Contributor Timothy E. Fulbright, David G. Hewitt, Published by CRC Press, 2007, [ISBN 0849374871] Currently, there are about 400-550 animals in the wild.
In Tibet, tiger and leopard pelts have traditionally been used in various ceremonies and costumes. In January 2006 the Dalai Lama preached a ruling against using, selling, or buying wild animals, their products, or derivatives. It has yet to be seen whether this will result in a long-term slump in the demand for poached tiger and leopard skins.
The first attempt at rewilding was by Indian conservationist Billy Arjan Singh, who reared a zoo-born tigress named Tara, and released her in the wilds of Dudhwa National Park in 1978. This was soon followed by a large number of people being eaten by a tigress who was later shot. Government officials claim that this tigress was Tara, an assertion hotly contested by Singh and conservationists. Later on, this rewilding gained further disrepute when it was found that the local gene pool had been sullied by Tara's introduction as she was partly Siberian tiger, a fact not known at the time of release, ostensibly due to poor record-keeping at Twycross Zoo, where she had been raised. Indian tiger isn't 100 per cent âswadeshi (Made in India)â; by Pallava Bagla; Indian Express Newspaper; November 19, 1998 Tainted Royalty, Wildlife: Royal Bengal Tiger, a controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes. By Subhadra Menon. India Today, November 17, 1997 The Tale of Tara, 4: Tara's Heritage from Tiger Territory website Genetic pollution in wild Bengal tigers, Tiger Territory website Interview with Billy Arjan Singh: Dudhwa's Tiger man, October 2000, Sanctuary Asia Magazine, sanctuaryasia.com Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence among big cats and their hybrids by Pattabhiraman Shankaranarayanan* and Lalji Singh*, *Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, CCMB Campus, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Government of India "Indians Look At Their Big Cats' Genes", Science, Random Samples, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 October 1997, 278: 807 (DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5339.807b) (in Random Samples),The American Association for the Advancement of Science BOOKS By & About Billy Arjan Singh Book - Tara: The Cocktail Tigress/Ram Lakhan Singh. Edited by Rahul Karmakar. Allahabad, Print World, 2000, xxxviii, 108 p., ills., $22. ISBN 81-7738-000-1. A book criticizing Billy Arjan Singh's release of hand reared hybrid Tigress Tara in the wild at Dudhwa National Park in India
The organisation Save China's Tigers, working with the Wildlife Research Centre of the State Forestry Administration of China and the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust, secured an agreement on the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild. The agreement, which was signed in Beijing on 26 November 2002, calls for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model through the creation of a pilot reserve in China where indigenous wildlife, including the South China Tiger, will be reintroduced. A number of Chinese tiger cubs will be selected from zoos in China and sent to a 300 square kilometer reserve near the town of Philippolis in South Africa, where they will be taught to hunt for themselves. The offspring of the trained tigers will be released into the pilot reserves in China, while the original animals will stay in South Africa to continue breeding. FAQs | Save China's Tigers A second Chinese tiger rehabilitation project is also being run in Fujian, China. Xinhua - English
China will conduct the work of surveying land, restoring habitat and prey within the pilot reserve.
Tiger hunting on elephant-back, India, early 19th Century
The tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India. Tiger hunting was done by some hunters on foot; others sat up on machans with a goat or buffalo tied out as bait; yet others on elephant-back. vide Royal Tiger (nom-de-plume) in The Manpoora Tiger - about a Tiger Hunt in Rajpootanah. (1836) Bengal Sporting Magazine, Vol IV. reproduced in The Treasures of Indian Wildlife'' In some cases, villagers beating drums were organised to drive the animals into the killing zone. Elaborate instructions were available for the skinning of tigers and there were taxidermists who specialised in the preparation of tiger skins.
Stereographic photograph (1903) of a captured man-eating tiger in the Calcutta zoo; the tiger had claimed 200 human victims.
Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Almost all tigers that are identified as man-eaters are quickly captured, shot, or poisoned. Unlike man-eating leopards, even established man-eating tigers will seldom enter human settlements, usually remaining at village outskirts. Man-eaters. The tiger and lion, attacks on humans Nevertheless, attacks in human villages do occur. Increasing tiger attacks trigger panic around Tadoba-Andhari reserve Man-eaters have been a particular problem in India and Bangladesh, especially in Kumaon, Garhwal and the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of Bengal, where some healthy tigers have been known to hunt humans. Because of rapid habitat loss due to climate change, tiger attacks have increased in the Sundarbans.
Instructions for tiger skinning
Many people in China have a belief that various tiger parts have medicinal properties, including as pain killers and aphrodisiacs. BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Beijing's penis emporium There is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. The use of tiger parts in pharmaceutical drugs in China is already banned, and the government has made some offenses in connection with tiger poaching punishable by death. Furthermore, all trade in tiger parts is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and a domestic trade ban has been in place in China since 1993. Still, there are a number of tiger farms in the country specializing in breeding the cats for profit. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 captive-bred, semi-tame animals live in these farms today. WWF: Chinese tiger farms must be investigated WWF: Breeding tigers for trade soundly rejected at cites
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums estimates that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA, significantly more than the world's entire wild population. Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006. 4,000 are believed to be in captivity in Texas alone.
Part of the reason for America's enormous tiger population relates to legislation. Only nineteen states have banned private ownership of tigers, fifteen require only a licence, and sixteen states have no regulations at all.
The success of breeding programmes at American zoos and circuses led to an overabundance of cubs in the 1980s and 1990s, which drove down prices for the animals. The SPCA estimate there are now 500 lions, tigers and other big cats in private ownership just in the Houston area.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the protagonist, Tony Montana, aspires to obtaining all the exterior trappings of the American Dream, which in the character's opinion included keeping a pet tiger on his property
19th century painting of a tiger by Kuniyoshi Utagawa
The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, Tiger Culture | Save China's Tigers representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character ç, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with ç on their forehead.
Of great importance in Chinese myth and culture, the tiger is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Also in various Chinese art and martial art, the tiger is depicted as an earth symbol and equal rival of the Chinese dragon- the two representing matter and spirit respectively. In fact, the Southern Chinese martial art Hung Ga is based on the movements of the Tiger and the Crane. In Imperial China, a tiger was the personification of war and often represented the highest army general (or present day defense secretary), while the emperor and empress were represented by a dragon and phoenix, respectively. The White Tiger ( ) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West (西æ¹ç½è), and it represents the west and the autumn season.
The Hindu goddess Durga riding a tiger - painting in Orissa, India.
In Buddhism, it is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
The Tungusic people considered the Siberian tiger a near-deity and often referred to it as "Grandfather" or "Old man". The Udege and Nanai called it "Amba". The Manchu considered the Siberian tiger as Hu Lin, the king.
Sala fighting the tiger, the symbol of Hoysala Empire at Belur, Karnataka, India.
The widely worshiped Hindu goddess Durga, an aspect of Devi-Parvati, is a ten-armed warrior who rides the tigress (or lioness) Damon into battle. In southern India the god Aiyappa was associated with a tiger.
The weretiger replaces the werewolf in shapeshifting folklore in Asia;
in India they were evil sorcerers while in Indonesia and Malaysia they were somewhat more benign.
The tiger continues to be a subject in literature; both Rudyard Kipling, in The Jungle Book, and William Blake, in Songs of Experience, depict the tiger as a menacing and fearful animal. In The Jungle Book, the tiger, Shere Khan, is the wicked mortal enemy of the protagonist, Mowgli. However, other depictions are more benign: Tigger, the tiger from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is cuddly and likable. In the Man Booker Prize winning novel "Life of Pi," the protagonist, Pi Patel, sole human survivor of a ship wreck in the Pacific Ocean, befriends another survivor: a large Bengal Tiger. The famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. A tiger is also featured on the cover of the popular cereal Frosted Flakes (also marketed as "Frosties") bearing the name "Tony the Tiger".
A toy showing a tiger pouncing on a redcoat (British soldier). This belonged to Tippu Sultan who was popularly known as the Tiger of Mysore.
The Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, Nepal, India National Animal Panthera tigris, Tiger is the national animal of India Govt. of India website, (Bengal Tiger) Malaysia (Malayan Tiger), North Korea and South Korea (Siberian Tiger).
In a poll conducted by Animal Planet, the Tiger was voted the world's favourite animal, narrowly beating man's best friend, the dog. More than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll. The tiger received 21 percent of the vote, the dog 20, the dolphin 13, the horse 10, the lion 9, the snake 8, followed by the elephant, the chimpanzee, the orangutan and the whale. Tiger tops dog as world's favourite animal Pers® - The Tiger is the World's Favorite Animal CBBC Newsround | Animals | Tiger 'is our favourite animal' Endangered tiger earns its stripes as the world's most popular beast | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
Animal behaviourist Candy d'Sa, who worked with Animal Planet on the list, said: "We can relate to the tiger, as it is fierce and commanding on the outside, but noble and discerning on the inside".
Callum Rankine, international species officer at the World Wildlife Federation conservation charity, said the result gave him hope. "If people are voting tigers as their favourite animal, it means they recognise their importance, and hopefully the need to ensure their survival," he said.
Image:Brehms Het Leven der Dieren Zoogdieren Orde 4 Tijger (Felis tigris).jpg|Picture of Felis tigris (Panthera tigris) subspecies unknown
Image:Indischer Maler um 1650 (II) 001.jpg|Dervish with a lion and a tiger. Mughal painting, c. 1650
Image:India tiger.jpg|Bengal tiger
Image:Sumatratiger-004.jpg|Sumatran tiger
Image:Siberischer tiger de edit02.jpg|Siberian Tiger
Image:Siberian-Tiger.jpg|Siberian tiger
Image:Tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar.jpg|Bengal tiger cooling off at Bandhavghar, India
Image:Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo.jpg|Vibrissae of a Tiger at Chester Zoo
*Black tiger (animal)
*Maltese Tiger
*Project Tiger, India
*Siegfried & Roy, two famous tamers of tigers
*Tiger Temple, a Buddhist temple in Thailand famous for its tame tigers
* (1993). Big cats kingdom of might , Voyageur press.
* . (2001) Animal Habitats P. 172 ISBN 0-8160-4594-1
* & (eds). 2005. The Treasures of Indian Wildlife. Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Mumbai.
* (1981). Panthera tigris. (PDF). Mammalian Species, 152: 1-8. American Society of Mammalogists.
* (1999) Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
* Abridged German translation of Return of the Tiger, Lustre Press, 1993.
* . (1999) Riding the Tiger. Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521648351
* 21st Century Tiger: information about tigers and conservation projects
* Biodiversity Heritage Library bibliography for Panthera tigris
* Save China's Tigers: information about tigers and the South China Tiger rewilding project in Africa
* Save The Tiger Fund
* Sundarbans Tiger Project: research and conservation of tigers in the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world
* Tiger Canyons Homepage: information about tigers and the Crossbred Tiger Rewilding project
* Tigers in Crisis
* WWF â Tigers
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Trumpet | Did the predecessors to trumpets have valves? | No | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Are trumpets constructed of brass? | Yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Is the bass trumpet the smallest trumpet? | No | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What musical styles is the trumpet used in? | Ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk. | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What is the most common type of trumpet? | The B trumpet. | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
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Trumpet | How does a trumpet produce sound? | By blowing air through closed lips. | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | How do trumpets compensate for wolf tones? | Somce trumpetes have a slide mechanism built in to compensate. | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Did Miles Davis play the trumpet? | Yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Does a trumpet have a mellower tone than a cornet? | No | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Turtle | Is the name of the upper shell of a turtle called the plastron? | No. | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
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The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Do scutes fall away from the turtle's shell? | Some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell. | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Do scutes fall away from the turtle's shell? | yes, eventually | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
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Turtle | Do Terrestrial tortoises have short feet? | Yes. | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
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The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Do Terrestrial tortoises have short feet? | yes | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | How many groups are turtles broken down into? | Two | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | How many groups are turtles broken down into? | two | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Where are the only surviving giant tortoises? | They are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands. | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
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Turtle | Where are the only surviving giant tortoises? | Seychelles and Galápagos Islands | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
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The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | How do turtles chew food? | Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | How do turtles chew food? | Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Are tortoises land based? | Yes. | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Are tortoises land based? | yes | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
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Turtle | Where are turtle eggs layed? | Turtles lay eggs on land. | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
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The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Where are turtle eggs layed? | on land | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Is turtle soup considered a delicacy? | No. | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Is turtle soup considered a delicacy? | yes | data/set1/a4 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Are Testudines the crown group of the superorder Chelonia? | yes | data/set1/a9 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
200px
The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
|
Turtle | Are Testudines the crown group of the superorder Chelonia? | Yes | data/set1/a9 | Turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs. "Turtle" may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic see also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise, and the discussion below.
The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, ARCHELON- Enchanted Learning Software making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes. About 300 species are alive today, and some are highly endangered.
Like other reptiles, turtles are ectotherms varying their internal temperature according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. Like other amniotes (reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals), they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. The largest turtles are aquatic.
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The largest chelonian is the great leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm (80 inches) and can reach a weight of over 900 kg (2,000 lb, or 1 short ton). Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm or 80 in (Das, 1991). This dwarfs even the better-known Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest chelonian in North America, which attains a shell length of up to 80 cm (31½ in) and a weight of about 60 kg (170 lb).
Giant tortoises of the genera Geochelone, Meiolania, and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed that humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm (50 in) in length, and weigh about 300 kg (670 lb). CTTC's Turtle Trivia
The largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m (15 ft) long. Marine Turtles
The smallest turtle is the Speckled Padloper Tortoise of South Africa. It measures no more than 8 cm (3 in) in length and weighs about 140 g (5 oz). Two other species of small turtles are the American mud turtles and musk turtles that live in an area that ranges from Canada to South America. The shell length of many species in this group is less than 13 cm (5 in) in length.
Turtles are broken down into two groups, according to how they evolved a solution to the problem of withdrawing their neck into their shell (something the ancestral Proganochelys could not do): the Cryptodira, which can draw their neck in while contracting it under their spine; and the Pleurodira, which contract their neck to the side.
Closeup head-on view of a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), taken near the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
A turtle with eyes closer to the end of the head. Keeping only the nostrils and the eyes above the water surface.
Turtle in the zoo of Sharm el-Sheikh
Turtle in the zoo from Czech republic
Turtle in the backyard of a Florida Resident.
Most turtles that spend most of their life on land have their eyes looking down at objects in front of them. Some aquatic turtles, such as snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles, have eyes closer to the top of the head. These species of turtles can hide from predators in shallow water where they lie entirely submerged except for their eyes and nostrils. Sea turtles possess glands near their eyes that produce salty tears that rid their body of excess salt taken in from the water they drink.
Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near Ultraviolet (UV A) to Red. Some land turtles have very poor pursuit movement abilities, which are normally reserved for predators that hunt quick moving prey, but carnivorous turtles are able to move their heads quickly to snap.
Turtles have a rigid beak. Turtles use their jaws to cut and chew food. Instead of teeth, the upper and lower jaws of the turtle are covered by horny ridges. Carnivorous turtles usually have knife-sharp ridges for slicing through their prey. Herbivorous turtles have serrated-edged ridges that help them cut through tough plants. Turtles use their tongues to swallow food, but they cannot, unlike most reptiles, stick out their tongues to catch food.
The upper shell of the turtle is called the carapace. The lower shell that encases the belly is called the plastron. The carapace and plastron are joined together on the turtle's sides by bony structures called bridges. The inner layer of a turtle's shell is made up of about 60 bones that includes portions of the backbone and the ribs, meaning the turtle cannot crawl out of its shell. In most turtles, the outer layer of the shell is covered by horny scales called scutes that are part of its outer skin, or epidermis. Scutes are made up of a fibrous protein called keratin that also makes up the scales of other reptiles. These scutes overlap the seams between the shell bones and add strength to the shell. Some turtles do not have horny scutes. For example, the leatherback sea turtle and the soft-shelled turtles have shells covered with leathery skin instead.
The rigid shell means that turtles cannot breathe as other reptiles do, by changing the volume of their chest cavity via expansion and contraction of the ribs. Instead, turtles breathe in two ways. First, they employ buccal pumping, pulling air into their mouth then pushing it into the lungs via oscillations of the floor of the throat. Secondly, by contracting the abdominal muscles that cover the posterior opening of the shell, the internal volume of the shell increases, drawing air into the lungs, allowing these muscles to function in much the same way as the mammalian diaphragm.
The shape of the shell gives helpful clues to how the turtle lives. Most tortoises have a large dome-shaped shell that makes it difficult for predators to crush the shell between their jaws. One of the few exceptions is the African pancake tortoise which has a flat, flexible shell that allows it to hide in rock crevices. Most aquatic turtles have flat, streamlined shells which aid in swimming and diving. American snapping turtles and musk turtles have small, cross-shaped plastrons that give them more efficient leg movement for walking along the bottom of ponds and streams.
Baby turtle hiding in its shell
The color of a turtle's shell may vary. Shells are commonly colored brown, black, or olive green. In some species, shells may have red, orange, yellow, or grey markings and these markings are often spots, lines, or irregular blotches. One of the most colorful turtles is the eastern Painted Turtle which includes a yellow plastron and a black or olive shell with red markings around the rim.
Tortoises, being land-based, have rather heavy shells. In contrast, aquatic and soft-shelled turtles have lighter shells that help them avoid sinking in water and swim faster with more agility. These lighter shells have large spaces called fontanelles between the shell bones. The shell of a leatherback turtle is extremely light because they lack scutes and contain many fontanelles.
As mentioned above, the outer layer of the shell is part of the skin, each scute (or plate) on the shell corresponding to a single modified scale. The remainder of the skin is composed of skin with much smaller scales, similar to the skin of other reptiles. Turtles and terrapins do not molt their skins all in one go, as snakes do, but continuously, in small pieces. When kept in aquaria, small sheets of dead skin can be seen in the water (often appearing to be a thin piece of plastic) having been sloughed off when the animal deliberately rubs itself against a piece of wood or stone. Tortoises also shed skin, but a lot of dead skin is allowed to accumulate into thick knobs and plates that provide protection to parts of the body outside the shell.
By counting the rings formed by the stack of smaller, older scutes on top of the larger, newer ones, it is possible to estimate the age of a turtle, if you know how many scutes are produced in a year. Anatomy and Diseases of the Shells of Turtles and Tortoises This method is not very accurate, partly because growth rate is not constant, but also because some of the scutes eventually fall away from the shell.
Two turtles with outstretched limbs beside a Minnesota pond.
Terrestrial tortoises have short, sturdy feet. Tortoises are famous for moving slowly, in part because of their heavy, cumbersome shell, which restricts stride length.
The amphibious turtles normally have limbs similar to those of tortoises except that the feet are webbed and often have long claws. These turtles swim using all four feet in a way similar to the dog paddle, with the feet on the left and right side of the body alternately providing thrust. Large turtles tend to swim less than smaller ones, and the very big species, such as alligator snapping turtles, hardly swim at all, preferring to simply walk along the bottom of the river or lake. As well as webbed feet, turtles also have very long claws, used to help them clamber onto riverbanks and floating logs, upon which they like to bask. Male turtles tend to have particularly long claws, and these appear to be used to stimulate the female while mating. While most turtles have webbed feet, some, such as the Pig-nosed Turtle, have true flippers, with the digits being fused into paddles and the claws being relatively small. These species swim in the same way as sea turtles (see below).
Sea turtles are almost entirely aquatic and have flippers instead of feet. Sea turtles fly through the water, using the up-and-down motion of the front flippers to generate thrust; the back feet are not used for propulsion but may be used as rudders for steering. Compared with freshwater turtles, sea turtles have very limited mobility on land, and apart from the dash from the nest to the sea as hatchlings, male sea turtles normally never leave the sea. Females must come back onto land to lay eggs. They move very slowly and laboriously, dragging themselves forwards with their flippers.
A turtle hatchling.
Although many turtles spend large amounts of their lives underwater, all turtles and tortoises breathe air, and must surface at regular intervals to refill their lungs. They can also spend much of their lives on dry land. Aquatic respiration in Australian freshwater turtles is currently being studied. Some species have large cloacal cavities that are lined with many finger-like projections. These projections, called papillae, have a rich blood supply, and increase the surface area of the cloaca. The turtles can take up dissolved oxygen from the water using these papillae, in much the same way that fish use gills to respire.
Turtles lay eggs, like other reptiles, which are slightly soft and leathery. The eggs of the largest species are spherical, while the eggs of the rest are elongated. Their albumen is white and contains a different protein than bird eggs, such that it will not coagulate when cooked. Turtle eggs prepared to eat consist mainly of yolk. In some species, temperature determines whether an egg develops into a male or a female: a higher temperature causes a female, a lower temperature causes a male. Large numbers of eggs are deposited in holes dug into mud or sand. They are then covered and left to incubate by themselves. When the turtles hatch, they squirm their way to the surface and head toward the water. There are no known species in which the mother cares for the young.
Sea turtles lay their eggs on dry, sandy beaches. Immature sea turtles are not cared for by the adults. Turtles can take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.
Researchers have recently discovered a turtleâs organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes. All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans
"Chelonia" (Testudines) from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
Turtles are divided into three suborders, one of which, the Paracryptodira, is extinct. The two extant suborders are the Cryptodira and the Pleurodira. The Cryptodira is the larger of the two groups and includes all the marine turtles, the terrestrial tortoises, and many of the freshwater turtles. The Pleurodira are sometimes known as the side-necked turtles, a reference to the way they withdraw their heads into their shells. This smaller group consists primarily of various freshwater turtles.
The first proto-turtles are believed to have existed in the early Triassic Period of the Mesozoic era, about 220 million years ago, and their shell, which has remained a remarkably stable body plan, is thought to have evolved from bony extensions of their backbones and broad ribs that expanded and grew together to form a complete shell that offered protection at every stage of its evolution, even when the bony component of the shell was not complete. This is supported by fossils of the freshwater Odontochelys semitestacea, the "half-shelled turtle with teeth", have been found near Guangling in south-west China, which displays a complete bony plastron and an incomplete carapace, similar to an early stage of turtle embryonic development Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang & Li-Jun Zhao (2008). "An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China" Nature, 456 497-501. . Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossil turtles were terrestrial and had a complete shell, offering no clue to the evolution of this remarkable anatomical feature. By the late Jurassic, turtles had radiated widely, and their fossil history becomes easier to read.
Their exact ancestry is disputed. It was believed that they are the only surviving branch of the ancient clade Anapsida, which includes groups such as procolophonids, millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs. All anapsid skulls lack a temporal opening, while all other extant amniotes have temporal openings (although in mammals the hole has become the zygomatic arch). The millerettids, protorothyrids, and pareiasaurs became extinct in the late Permian period, and the procolophonoids during the Triassic. Introduction to Procolophonoidea
However, it was recently suggested that the anapsid-like turtle skull may be due to reversion rather than to anapsid descent. More recent morphological phylogenetic studies with this in mind placed turtles firmly within diapsids, slightly closer to Squamata than to Archosauria. Rieppel, O., and DeBraga, M. (1996). "Turtles as diapsid reptiles." Nature, 384: 453-455. All molecular studies have strongly upheld the placement of turtles within diapsids, though some place turtles closer to Archosauria than Squamata. Zardoya, R., and Meyer, A. (1998). "Complete mitochondrial genome suggests diapsid affinities of turtles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(24): 14226-14231. Reanalysis of prior phylogenies suggests that they classified turtles as anapsids both because they assumed this classification (most of them studying what sort of anapsid turtles are) and because they did not sample fossil and extant taxa broadly enough for constructing the cladogram. As of 2003, the consensus is that Testudines diverged from other diapsids between 200 and 279 million years ago. Integrating Reptilian Herpesviruses into the Family Herpesviridae
The earliest known fully-shelled turtle is the late-Triassic Proganochelys, though this species already had many advanced turtle traits, and thus probably had many millions of years of preceding turtle evolution and species in its ancestry. It did lack the ability to pull its head into its shell (and it had a long neck), and had a long, spiked tail ending in a club, implying an ancestry occupying a similar niche to the ankylosaurs (though only through parallel evolution).
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English
Turtles, particularly small terrestrial and freshwater turtles, are commonly kept as pets. Among the most popular are Russian Tortoises, Spur-thighed Tortoises, and Red-eared sliders (or terrapin). David Alderton (1986). An Interpret Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians, Salamander Books Ltd., London & New York.
In the United States, due to the ease of contracting salmonella through casual contact with turtles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a regulation in 1975 to discontinue the sale of turtles under 4 inches. It is illegal in every state in the U.S. for anyone to sell any turtles under 4 inches long. Many stores and flea markets still sell small turtles due to a loophole in the FDA regulation which allows turtles under 4 inches to be sold for educational purposes. GCTTS FAQ: "4 Inch Law", actually an FDA regulation Turtles intrastate and interstate requirements; FDA Regulation, Sec. 1240.62, page 678 part d1.
Some states have other laws and regulations regarding possession of Red-eared Sliders (abbreviated as RES) as pets because they are looked upon as invasive species or pests where they are not native but have been introduced through the pet trade. As of July 1, 2007 it is illegal in Florida to sell any wild type RES. Unusual color varieties such as albino and pastel RES, which are derived from captive breeding, are still allowed for sale. Turtle ban begins today; New state law, newszap.com, July 01, 2007, retrieved July 06, 2007
The window of a restaurant serving guilinggao, decorated with a é¾ ('turtle') character
The flesh of turtles was, and still is, considered a delicacy in a number of cultures. Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine, and still remains so in some parts of the Far East.
Guilinggao jelly was a Chinese medicine preparation containing powdered shell of a certain turtle species; these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.
Harvesting wild turtles is legal in Florida, and a single seafood company in Fort Lauderdale was reported (2008) as buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. The harvesters (hunters) are paid about $2 a pound; some manage to catch as many as 30-40 turtles (500 pounds) on a good day. Some of the catch gets to the local restaurants, while most of it is exported to the Far East; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates (2008) that around 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are exported each week via Tampa International Airport. "China Gobbling Up Florida Turtles", By CRAIG PITTMAN, St. Petersburg Times. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
*Adwaita: a giant turtle of Aldabra. It was reportedly 250 years old when it died at Kolkata Zoo on March 23, 2006.
*Araripemys arturi
*List of Testudines families
*Red-eared slider: most common pet turtle
*Sea turtles
*Turtle racing
*Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises
*Turtle soup
*Little Turtle - chief of the Miami Tribe
* Iskandar, DT (2000). Turtles and Crocodiles of Insular Southeast Asia and New Guinea. ITB, Bandung.
* Pritchard, Pether C H (1979). Encyclopedia of Turtles. T.F.H. Publications.
* UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
* Chelonian studbook Collection and display of the weights/sizes of captive turtles
* John M. Legler & Arthur Georges, Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Chelonia (taxonomy, maps)
* The word 'turtle' in many different languages
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