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Sunday cat blogging
Where do most tigers live?
In the United States it turns out. There are 4,000 tigers residing in captivity in Texas alone, where private ownership of tigers is legal. The number of tigers left in the wild is perhaps no more than 5,100-7,500.
A tiger cub costs about $1,000 while the more exotic blue-eyed white tiger costs $15,000.
That is from The Book of General Ignorance, an interesting compilation of not so well known facts.
I learned also that chamelons do not change color to fit their background (the changes are determined by their emotional states), moths are disoriented by flames rather than attracted to them, and (possibly) America was named after Richard Amerike rather than Amerigo Vespucci; I still haven't gotten to the bottom of that one. Amerike, a wealthy merchant, helped finance Cabot's voyage, and asked that any discovered lands be named after him.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 19, 2007 at 08:27 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
A note so well non fact:
Emperor Akbar the Great was illiterate.
Posted by: ponmel at Aug 19, 2007 9:15:16 AM
A note so well non fact:
Emperor Akbar the Great was illiterate.
Posted by: ponmel at Aug 19, 2007 9:16:36 AM
A tiger is cheaper than a decent sofa, not to mention a decent horse or lama? $1,000 for an individual on one of the most impressive endangered species seems far too cheap.
I can only imagine a price this low if there is a substantial likelihood that the tiger will be take away by wildlife authorities or if it a pro forma price between zoos.
Posted by: stefan at Aug 19, 2007 12:21:38 PM
I'd say tigers are more like printers, rather. The same people who sell you tigers sell you tiger food, cages, tiger vet care, etc. That's based on no evidence whatsoever, but it's one reason why prices might be low.
Posted by: jb at Aug 19, 2007 2:18:23 PM
It's not uncommon for certain dogs to cost over $1,000, so it does strike me as an extremely low price. That said, the demand might be limited. While it sounds cool, how many people really want to own a tiger? The maintanence costs must be extremely high as well.
Posted by: Doug at Aug 19, 2007 5:11:05 PM
From various web sources, it seems that an average tiger consumes between 2500 to 3500 pounds of meat per year. If you add veterinary expenses and overhead for escape-proof accomodations, the $1000 price tag is probably there just to filter out impulse purchases by obviously unsuitable would-be owners. Otherwise, tiger cubs would be Chrysler-like assets that you pay someone to take off your hands.
Posted by: at Aug 19, 2007 8:22:23 PM
good point.
I looked at the book's amazon summary; I'm tempted to buy it just out of curiosity over how they figured out that only 5 of 100,000 paper clips are used to clip papers.
Posted by: at Aug 19, 2007 9:08:51 PM
Haven't tigers been known to maul their owners or do their owners keep them in large cages? Owning a tiger seems extremely dangerous.
Posted by: bds195 at Aug 20, 2007 11:51:37 AM
My wife once worked as a nurse in the ICU of a hospital in Lubbock, TX. This guy that owned and trained Bengal Tigers was torn up pretty badly by one of them, and ended up in the ICU, where he eventually died. One nice outcome of this tragedy was that another of the nurses in the ICU ended up in a relationship with one of the paramedics that brought him in, and they ended up getting married.
Posted by: Darin London at Aug 20, 2007 12:54:41 PM
It is also a little known fact that chameleons emotional states can be concretely related to their physical environment. So while the statement "I feel like a thick tree branch" may sound absurd to us, it is actually quite meaningful to chameleons.
Posted by: mobile at Aug 20, 2007 1:43:10 PM
I beleive that maths fly toward light, a good heuristic in a world without
artificial lights, but not a minimax strategy in today's world.
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