Today we’re admiring photos of the majestic Amur (Siberian) tiger, a species that has been pulled back from the brink of extinction thanks to the hard work of conservationists.
The Amur tiger, panthera tigris altaica, is the largest subspecies of the largest cat in the world.
Click an image in the gallery to view a higher resolution version:
All images in the gallery above via Wikimedia Commons. Header image via Pexels.
While ferocity comes naturally to cats, hunting skill must be honed. Only those who are the most dedicated to their craft can claim the title of Apex Predator!
Watch an apex predator hone his supreme hunting skills and show his toys who’s boss!
The surprise announcement came from Colossal Biosciences, a company best known for its project to bring back the woolly mammoth.
A US biotech company shocked the world Monday when it announced the births of three dire wolf puppies, bringing back a species that hasn’t lived for more than ten millennia.
Or a version of that species, at least.
Scientists with Colossal Biosciences extracted DNA “from a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies,” Colossal CEO Ben Lamm said in a statement.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple.
The dire wolf, Aenocyon dirus, was heavier, stockier and had thicker fur than modern-day gray wolves. In addition, its bite was incredibly strong, generating more force than any living species of canid.
To create the dire wolf puppies, Colossal used the genomes reconstructed from the tooth and skull, spliced them with gray wolf DNA, and made 20 gene edits in 14 genes. Healthy embryos were implanted in three surrogates — large, mixed-breed dogs — and were successfully delivered.
Whether the new puppies are officially dire wolves is up for debate and beyond the scope of this post, but just like humans and chimpanzees share 98.7 percent of their DNA, dire wolves and gray wolves share 99.5 percent of their DNA.
The species also existed concurrently with gray wolves and there was interbreeding between the populations, meaning gray wolves already have dire wolf lineage.
As a result, the puppies may be more dire wolf than some are willing to admit. Just how far a “de-extinction” project has to go for the animals to qualify as their namesakes will be debated for years, and there are innumerable questions for which we won’t have answers until the pups grow and scientists monitor their behavior in addition to their physical health.
They won’t behave precisely the way their ancestors did, since they are growing up in a captive environment with teams of specialists constantly monitoring them. The wolves are “essentially living the Ritz Carlton lifestyle of a wolf. They can’t get a splinter without us knowing about it,” Colossal’s chief science officer, Beth Shapiro, told the New York Times.
Whether bringing back dire wolves is a “good” thing is also a topic for another day, at least as far as this post goes. You may disagree, and feel free to say so in the comments, but this is a subject you could write half a library of books on, encompassing ecological, moral and philosophical questions that don’t have easy answers.
It’s made even more complex by the situation we find ourselves in, with our own behavior and relentless expansion killing off more than 70 percent of the world’s wildlife since 1970, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The company wants to use its technology to help critically endangered species, like the red fox, avoid extinction.
Colossal has partnered with leaders in the fields of genetics and bioethics, as well as organizations that specialize in animal welfare. The puppies are in a sizable, custom-built facility in an undisclosed location, secured by “zoo grade” barriers, and the company enlisted the help of the SPCA to create an environment appropriate for them. Colossal says their care regimen will include socialization and the development of pack dynamics.
The company has well-publicized projects to bring back woolly mammoths and the dodo, and ultimately, its founders say they want to restore balance in places where apex predators have been brought to extinction by human activity.
“This project demonstrates the awesome potential for advances in genetic engineering and reproductive technologies to recreate lost diversity,” Andrew Pask, a Colossal board member and professor of biosciences at the University of Melbourne, said in a statement. “Apex predators are critical to stabilizing entire ecosystems and their loss from the landscape can have profound impacts on biodiversity.”
The pups are named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi. That last name is in homage to the character Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) from the book series A Song of Ice and Fire, and Game of Thrones, the television adaptation. Dire wolves play a major part in the narrative, and the series is credited with bringing the long-extinct animals back into the popular imagination.
The third time’s the charm: After failing in his attempts to ingratiate himself with tigers and lions, Buddy heads south to the Amazon to commune with the jaguars.
MATO GROSSO DO SUL, Brazil — Fisherman and naturalists working in the Pantanal have reported a strange sight in recent weeks — a domestic cat tagging along with jaguars.
The gray tabby was observed lounging on the banks of the Amazon, napping in a tree and struggling to take bites out of a caiman killed by a generous jaguar, witnesses reported.
“HQ, we’ve got something extraordinary here,” a naturalist was heard reporting over local radio channels. “A jaguarundi is — no, scratch that — a house cat! A house cat is following a group of jaguars from the river bank into the deeper jungle.”
The feline in question was identified as Buddy the Cat of New York after his concerned human reached out to local authorities and appealed to the Brazilian press for his safe return.
“He does this all the time,” the New York man, identified as Big Buddy, told an interviewer from Folha De S. Paulo. “First he broke into the tiger exhibit at the Bronx Zoo and tried to get the tigers to accept him, only to be claimed as a cub by one of the tigresses. It took weeks to convince the zoo to get him out, and when I got him home I had to bathe him five times just to get the stink of tiger saliva off his fur.
“Then somehow he made his way to Tanzania, where he wandered around the Maasai Steppe for a few weeks trying to get into a lion pride. He failed miserably in that endeavor, too. Now with the jaguars. It never ends.”
The exasperated New York man claimed responsibility for his failure to keep his “ridiculous” cat from adventuring, but also blamed the transportation industry for accommodating Buddy.
“Who the hell allows an unaccompanied cat to take a bus or board an airplane?” he asked. “How did he end up in first class, sipping champagne and buzzing the stewardesses for more turkey every five minutes? I’m told he got quite drunk and threatened to become combative if he didn’t get an entire fried turkey.”
Asked why his cat was obsessed with ingratiating himself to larger cat species, Big Buddy answered without hesitation.
“He’s a dumbass,” the human said. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very cute, very loving little guy, and often a good boy, but a dumbass all the same.”
Buddy’s human said the 10-pound domestic cat often tears around the house, ambushing animate and inanimate objects and practicing his roar, “but he sounds like Elmo singing a funk song in falsetto.”
As of press time, Buddy the Cat still hadn’t returned home. Jaguars are known to be extraordinarily laid back compared to other big cats, and a loosely-affiliated group of the South American apex predators seemed to tolerate the domestic kitty.
“I can’t leave now,” Buddy told reporters. “They’ve begun to accept me! It would be a violation of trust if I just left them to eat all this delicious food by themselves.”
Kinich Ahau, the local jaguar elder, said his extended family had taken a liking to Buddy.
“Have you heard of this turkey? We did not know of it. It is wondrous!” the great jaguar said. “Buddy, or Kinich Bajo as he is known to us, has also shared great wisdom in the form of new and comfortable napping techniques. On the first night, we observed him construct a soft bed of leaves for himself in the crook of a branch, and over the following suns and moons we have come to appreciate softer napping spots.”
Buddy had sparked a renaissance in jaguarian napping technique, Kinich Ahau said.
“Nobody naps like Buddy,” he said. “No one!”
With the fond support of the Amazon’s jaguars, Buddy was set to undergo an ancient shamanistic ritual involving the imbibing of Ayahuasca, a powerful psychoactive brew said to reveal cosmological secrets to those who drink it as part of a spiritual ceremony.
“We would not have invited Kinich Bajo, or Buddy as you call him, to commune with the ancient B’alam (jaguar) spirits if we did not sense a deep spirituality and wisdom inside him,” said an elder jaguar shaman named Mike the Melanistic. “He has shown us the way in matters of snacking and napping, and now as we welcome him to our ethereal fraternity, we shall accompany him on his journey to the stars, where he will drink of the deep knowledge of our ancestors.”
Buddy himself told a reporter he was looking forward to the ceremony.
“It’ll grant me, like, awesome powers and shit,” he said. “I’ll be able to disappear in a puff of mist like the jaguars do, my muscles will get bigger and, like, I’ll be able to sniff out snacks from up to a mile away. Pretty cool, if you ask me.”
At press time the jaguar shaman elders said the ceremony does not, in fact, grant such powers.
Budd models for a series of promotional photos.
Have you been thinking about linking to Buddy from your blog, sharing Buddy’s wisdom from your social media pages, or simply ordering a small poster-size print of Buddy because he’s so damn handsome?
You’re in luck! Here are some promotional images centered around everyone’s favorite little dude and his many talents:
Pain In The Bud 