White+Bengal+Tiger

(White Bengal Tiger)    Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh my! The white Bengal tiger is an endangered species and it is one of the few tigers left. Since the 1900’s, the number of white Bengals has increasingly dropped. What started with about 40,000 at the turn of the century has dropped 97% down to 1,400! The tigers are coming close to being extinct because of disease spread by the tsetse fly, inbreeding from depleted gene pools, stress from contact with humans while held in captivity, and illegal poaching for profit and shaman medicine. Kingdom Animalia is where you’ll find the white Bengal tiger! Kingdom Animalia is the largest kingdom of them all! It consists of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish, and insects. This kingdom has the special sense organs that allow these organisms to move around and react in their environment. They are the only kingdom that has this ability, aside from the few exceptions to the rule such as the “walking” trees in the rainforest in South America. These trees actually move a very slowly everyday to get nutrients because of how dense the trees are. Kingdom Animalia is also eukaryotic, or its cells have nuclei; and they are multicellular, meaning that they are big enough to be seen with the naked eye because they are made up of more than one cell. The cells inside these organisms have cell membrane (a protective barrier that controls what goes in and out of the cell), but it doesn’t have a cell wall, (hard “shell” around the membrane). Animals also obtain their nutrients from other organisms, like plants and other animals, by eating them.  The white Bengal tiger is different than most tigers. Most tigers are thought to have orange fur with black stripes, but the white Bengal has a white, creamy fur with chocolate colored stripes. They also have blue eyes unlike some animals who have red ones.  Male tigers can grow up to ten feet and can weigh almost as much as 600 pounds! Females aren’t quite as big, but they can be about eight and a half feet and about 400 pounds.    Bengal tigers live in Asia in swampy or grassy areas, and in forests. The mother can birth to one to six cubs at a time, and they stay with their mother until they are two years old. The tigers have strong jaws used to catch and kill prey. They have great vision and sense of smell. One really interesting thing is they can control when they shed and when they do not depending on the temperature.   **Period 1**
 * // Panthera tigris //** [[image:DH_whitecubs.jpg width="328" height="187" align="right"]]
 * Emily, Stephanie, and Tyler **