They are critically endangered and also the smallest tiger and most widespread in captivity particularly in Australia, I watched a very emotional documentary on Sumatran Tigers, and I want them to be added because of these points
The Sumatran tiger is basically the only hard clone animal that I want. I honestly think it's so weird they went with the Bengal tiger over the Sumatran. Pure Bengal tigers are incredibly rare in captivity outside of South Asia and there isn't nearly as large a focus on them in captive breeding programmes as there is on the Sumatran.
Oh really? I never stop learning things in this forum! I love it. From my ignorance, I always associate tigers automatically with the Bengal tiger. In Spain, they are quite common, but it seems that's not the case abroad.
I think this might be one of those cases in which the "general public" associate one animal with one species, although the animal they are watching in the zoo is actually another species. For instance, the leopard or the lion, many people think they are watching an African animal, but the truth is that what they are watching are Asian subspecies.
NZFanatic is right. There aren't any pure Bengal tigers in Spain or anywhere else in Europe. It is however not uncommon for zoos to mis-sign species, which may be in the case in Spain if they really have something labeled as a Bengal tiger. For some reason Bengal does seem to be synonymous with Tiger for the general public, and I can only blame this phenomenon to a very small degree on Zoo Tycoon.
Oh really? I never stop learning things in this forum! I love it. From my ignorance, I always associate tigers automatically with the Bengal tiger. In Spain, they are quite common, but it seems that's not the case abroad.
That is actually the same thing with Giraffes in my home Australia's zoos. On their websites, zoos do not specify which of the subspecies of giraffe they belong to, so I basically try and guess, my top choices are Angolan Giraffe, Rothschild's Giraffe or Northern GiraffeThere's a fair bit to unpack here.
So, first of all, new taxonomical evidence suggests that there are actually only two tiger subspecies. You have the "mainland tiger" (Panthera tigris tigris, comprising the Bengal, Siberian, South China, Malayan, Indochinese, and extinct Caspian subpopulations) and the "Sunda tiger" (Panthera tigris sondaica, comprising of the Sumatran and the extinct Javan and Bali subpopulations). Many zoos haven't yet caught up with this new information yet. So "Bengal tiger" refers to only one isolated population of a single subspecies, not a distinct subspecies in its own right.
On top of that, most captive "Bengal" tigers are actually hybridised between Bengals and Siberian tigers, and often Indochinese tigers (in much the same way that captive populations of the Barbary lion subpopulation still exist, but are largely mixed with other populations of the northern lion (Panthera leo leo).
So there's a good chance your Spanish zoos are a little behind with new knowledge (as I said, many zoos tend to be, so it isn't limited to Spain or anything) or that they have hybridised Bengal tigers they are simply applying the Bengal name to (without truly realising it). Supposedly this is a huge problem with captive chimpanzee breeding programmes. When I was at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland there were discussions around doing intensive DNA analysis to figure out exactly where their chimps came from, because they didn't know which subspecies they belonged to.
That is actually the same thing with Giraffes in my home Australia's zoos. On their websites, zoos do not specify which of the subspecies of giraffe they belong to, so I basically try and guess, my top choices are Angolan Giraffe, Rothschild's Giraffe or Northern Giraffe