The Wonderful Thing About (Caspian) Tiggers

 There are two ways a species can return from extinction (bar cloning, which we will likely get to eventually).  One is to be rediscovered, and seevral recent examples are described in Forest Galante's new book Still Alive (It's a fascinating book, and I'll do a full review soon.)  

The other is, a bit paradoxically, to have never been a species at all.  Davud Brewer's book Birds New ToScience: 50 Years Of Avian Discoveries (2018) discusses dozens of brids which have been struck off the species list after later scientists discovered they weren't valid (they were part of a known species, they were hybrids, they were oddly colored individuals, etc.)

The Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) has been thought extinct.  I wrote in my book Rumors of Existence (1995) that: "The  Caspian tiger may also be extinct.  It once ranged across much of central Asia, but no recent sightings have been confirmed in Turkey or Russia.  A pawprint cast taken in Iran almost twenty years ago recorded the passage of a solitary animal, perhaps the last one in that country.  Today, a few may linger in the mountains of Afghanistan."  

As it now turns out, though, it was not extinct.  It was part of the same species as the Amur tiger, which is also now part of P. t. tigris.)  is doing ok by tiger standards (all tigers in the wild are endangered the Sumatran is extinct and the Javan almost certainly so). Now a WWF project is looking at moving Amur tigers to Central Asia to bring the tiget back to its historic range.  Paradoxically, the animal has both been lost and found.  

Until next time, visit me at: Matt Bille