Is Amur tiger the same subspecies as Siberian tiger?
A. Yep, the one and the same. The animal’s scientific name is Panthera tigris altaica; the older nomenclature used to be Panthera tigris longipilis , refering to the big cat’s beautiful, long fur. It was once found all over Northern Russia, including Siberia, but (the usual story again, I regret) human habitation has squeezed it into the less-populated Amur Valley region of the East where the last individuals are being hunted by poachers with dogs and guns. With scientific names a certain protocol is used: the first name, denoting the genus, is always headed with a capital letter; the second name, denoting the species, is always written in lowercase. If there is a third name (altaica or whatever), that denotes the subspecies and is also always in lowercase. All 3 names – genus, species, and subspecies, are also written or typed in italics . Why this is so, I haven’t a clue; it’s just one of those unbroken traditions of biologists the world over. It was the Swedish naturalist Carl Linne
