Happy Year of the Tiger ...

... for however long it'll last, anyway. :-(

Today is Chinese New Year, and the Chinese are celebrating the beginning of their Year of the Tiger. But in the People's Republic, the number of tigers alive in the wild have dwindled to only a few dozen - there may be less than thirty. They live in isolated pockets of territory and breed very little, if at all. Of course there are efforts being made to breed them in captivity ... but of course this is not a real solution to the problem.

It's sad to think of this magnificent animal slowly dying. Of the nine modern species of tigers, three are already extinct. The Siberian tiger, which is the species that lives in China, is teetering on the brink of extinction. There are two reasons for this. The first is the source of basically all the problems in the world today (and I'm not even exaggerating) - overpopulation. There are too many humans. Unlike pretty much every other species on this planet, we, the most advanced species of them all, are unable to accomplish the basic feat of controlling our own population, which means that we are slowly but surely killing off everything else. Humans suck. The second reason is woo. Chinese culture is full of shit and superstition about crap that doesn't work, never has and never will. Eat a powdered tiger's penis and you'll be like a tiger in the bedroom. What an obvious line of BS. Again, humans suck.

Happy Year of the Tiger. Here's a look at what we're killing off. :-(

I made this video during my 2009 visit to the Nordic Ark. The two tigers you see are Uri - he's the one on the roof; he was born in captivity - and Sparta, who was born in the wild, but taken into captivity when her mother was killed in an accident (caused by humans, of course) when she was a young cub. You can read some more about them here. Aw, they're so gorgeous. I hate humans. >:-(



And here's another video - this one not made by me, unfortunately - of Sparta interacting with another visitor to the Ark. You've got to take a look at this. What an animal. :-)