🤯 Did You Know (click to read)
Female tigers often adjust territory size based on prey density and habitat quality.
Male Malayan tigers may control territories spanning up to several hundred square kilometers depending on prey availability. In dense rainforest where prey density fluctuates, larger areas ensure sufficient food supply. Females maintain smaller overlapping ranges within male territories. These spatial demands mean that even large protected areas can support only a limited number of breeding adults. Habitat fragmentation slices these territories into disconnected patches. When space shrinks, conflict increases. Territory size directly determines population ceiling.
💥 Impact (click to read)
To support even 100 breeding adults, thousands of square kilometers of intact forest are required. That scale exceeds many national parks. Roads, plantations, and settlements divide once-continuous habitat into ecological islands. Tigers forced into smaller spaces face intensified competition and reduced prey access.
Conservation planning increasingly emphasizes landscape-level connectivity rather than isolated reserves. Wildlife corridors linking forest blocks can mean the difference between genetic viability and collapse. Without vast connected territory, the Malayan tiger’s ecological blueprint simply cannot function.
💬 Comments