In 1900, Hedinswen first discovered the Xinjiang tiger in the Tarim River Basin
Strolling through beautiful Xinjiang and listening to the stories of a thousand years, I am an old uncle in Xinjiang. On March 28, 1900, the Swedish naturalist Sven Hedin discovered the Xinjiang tiger for the first time in the Tarim River Basin in Xinjiang, China, which is also the first time that modern people know and know the Xinjiang tiger. The Xinjiang tiger, also known as the Tarim tiger, is a branch of the West Asian tiger. Mainly distributed in the Tarim River and Peacock River to Lop Nur in central Xinjiang, the body length of the Xinjiang tiger is 1.6-2.5 meters, the tail length is about 0.8 meters, and the weight is about 200-250 kg.
Xinjiang tigers live in the Tarim Basin, known as the "dry pole" of the earth
As we all know, the Tarim Basin is drought-prone and rainy all year round, with an annual precipitation of only 20 mm, but the evaporation is as high as 2600 mm, and the evaporation is 130 times that of precipitation, which is known as the "dry pole" on the earth. It is a miracle that the Xinjiang tiger can survive in such a harsh environment, so it is also called the most drought-tolerant tiger. The stripes of the Xinjiang tiger are dark brown, the markings on the head, neck, shoulders and the end of the tail are pure black, and the background color is pale yellowish brown, which is a camouflage color evolved by the Xinjiang tiger in order to adapt to the environment. Nourished by the Tarim River and Lop Nur River, they often haunt dense poplar forests and reeds to prey on wild boar, sheep and other animals.
The Xinjiang Tiger Secret disappeared, and its last figure was forever frozen in 1916
In 1899, Lin Zexu described in the "Diary of Yi Wei" that "every tiger trace in the Tao" is described. In 1877, the Russian explorer Przewalski described that "there were as many tigers there as wolves in the Volga, indicating that there were still more Tigers in Xinjiang at that time." However, it is lamentable that only 20 years have passed, the Xinjiang tigers living here have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and the last time humans saw the Xinjiang tigers was forever fixed on a certain day in 1916, and in the decades since, scientific expeditions have searched many times, but they have never found any trace. Where did the Xinjiang tiger go? It was not until February 1973, when the International Conference on tiger protection in India was officially announced to be extinct, that people woke up from surprise: our Xinjiang tiger was dead, and dead!
Specimens of Xinjiang tiger skins displayed in the Stockholm Museum in Sweden
Xinjiang tiger as an indigenous species, it is reasonable to say that there should be a lot of tiger skin or specimens handed down, but strangely, so far, China has not found a specimen of the Xinjiang tiger, not even a complete fur, and people's understanding of the Xinjiang tiger is limited to the mouth of two foreigners, Przewalski and Sven Hedin, in addition, no one has really seen or captured it. It wasn't until 1990 that the Chinese scholar Yang Lian finally saw a colorful Xinjiang tiger skin at the Stockholm Museum in Sweden. It is understood that this was purchased by Sven Hedin from rob hunters during a plough expedition in the early 1900s, which was an underage tiger with 220 pounds at its death, and because it was poisoned, the skin was quite intact.
The rate of extinction of the Xinjiang tiger was too rapid, and it took only a few decades from discovery to extinction.
As the "king of the hundred beasts", the Xinjiang tiger has become extinct too fast in history, from spreading throughout the Tarim Basin to extinction, it only took a few decades, so that no video data was left. So, what caused the disappearance and extinction of the Xinjiang tiger? There are three types of boiling down: the first is environmental degradation. In the 1920s, the Tarim River was forced to divert north due to the accumulation of sediment in the river, resulting in the depletion of water sources in most of the downstream areas, the drying up of lakes, which directly led to environmental degradation, the disappearance of forests and reeds along the banks of the river, and the death of a large number of wild animals, including the Xinjiang tiger. It can be said that human beings have destroyed the natural environment in which Xinjiang Tiger Lai lives, so that it will finally move towards the end of life. The second is the dramatic increase in population. At the beginning of the last century, due to the rapid increase in the population of Xinjiang, a large number of forests were encroached upon and reclaimed into farmland, and the natural ecology was seriously damaged, and the living area of the Xinjiang tiger was seriously squeezed and caused food shortages, which aggravated the demise of the Xinjiang tiger. The third is large-scale hunting. Hedin once recorded the tiger hunting scene of the Lop Nur people at that time. Rob hunters first occupy favorable terrain, set up a position, wait for the tiger to appear, when the tiger appears, someone shouts loudly, and then chases the tiger to the reeds surrounded by water for hunting, and the large-scale hunting eventually leads to the extinction of the Xinjiang tiger.
Legend has it that local ants like to nibble on tiger cubs' clothes that led to the extinction of Xinjiang tigers
Regarding the extinction of the Xinjiang tiger, there is another theory that it is because of ants. In the tenth chapter of his Lop Nur Quest, Hedinsven tells a story: there is a very large local ant that feeds on tiger cubs, and when the tigress gives birth, they will nibble on the young tiger's clothes in droves until they finally kill the tiger cubs. Yang Sickle, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has visited the Tarim region several times, and he also confirmed that the ants there are relatively large and strange in color, and when they find animal carcasses and animal calves, they will flock to it. But he dismissed the claim that ants caused the extinction of the Xinjiang tiger. He believes that the real reason for the extinction of the Xinjiang tiger is humans, not ants.