JAVAN TIGER

The Javan tiger was a Panthera tigris sondaica population native to the Indonesian island

of Java until the mid-1970s.[4][5] It was hunted to extinction, and its natural habitat converted for
agricultural land use and infrastructure. [1] It was one of the three tiger populations in the Sunda
Islands.[6]
Formerly, it was regarded as a distinct tiger subspecies, which had been assessed as extinct on
the IUCN Red List in 2008.[5] In 2017, felid taxonomy was revised and the Javan tiger subordinated
to P. t. sondaica along with the Sumatran tiger and the Bali tiger.[4]
Results of mitochondrial DNA analysis of 23 tiger samples from museum collections indicate that
tigers colonized the Sunda Islands throughout the last glacial period 11,000–12,000 years ago.[7]

CHARACTERISTICS

Skin of a Javan tiger in the collection of the Tropenmuseum, 1915

Tiger skull from Java in the collection of the Museum Wiesbaden

The Javan tiger was small compared to other subspecies of the Asian mainland, but larger than the
Bali tiger, and similar in size to the Sumatran tiger.[11] It usually had long and thin stripes, which were
slightly more numerous than those of the Sumatran tiger. Its nose was long and narrow, occipital
plane remarkably narrow and carnassials relatively long. Based on these cranial differences, the
Javan tiger was proposed to be assigned to a distinct species, with the taxonomic name Panthera
sondaica.[6]
Males had a mean body length of 248 cm (98 in) and weighed between 100 and 141 kg (220 and
311 lb). Females were smaller than males and weighed between 75 and 115 kg (165 and 254 lb).[11]
The smaller body size of the Javan tiger is attributed to Bergmann’s rule and the size of the available
prey species in Java, which are smaller than the deer and bovid species on the Asian mainland.
However, the diameter of its tracks are larger than those of Bengal tiger in Bangladesh, India,
and Nepal.[12]
The Javan tiger was said to be strong enough to break legs of horses or water buffaloes with its
paws.[13]