The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is a regularly used subspecies of tiger found only in Sumatra. In the IUCN taskgroup taxonomic revision published in 2017, it is considered one subspecies along with the extinct P. t. balica and P. t. sondaica: P. t. sondaica.
This subspecies is smaller than the other subspecies and has a dark brown colour. Furthermore, its fur is dark orange. This animal used to be common throughout Sumatra, but nowadays only 800 specimens remain, 350 of them in the wild. The stripe pattern often consists of two parallel rows.
The Sumatran tiger differs from other tigers in the size of some parts of the skull. In some characteristics, this form stands between the Javan tiger (P. t. sondaica) on one side and the Indo-Chinese tiger (P. t. corbetti) on the other; possibly this subspecies is the result of hybridisation between the other two forms. Some researchers consider the differences from other subspecies to be large enough to consider the Sumatran tiger a separate species, P. sumatrae, but this is not widely accepted.
I am Maarten Verhees. The focus of my photographs is on the variation of architecture, animals and people. I try to capture the essence of local places in photographs... Read more…