The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

What immortal hand or eye dare Photoshop thy fearful symmetry?

A tiger's scientific name is Panthera tigris. There are several subspecies, though not so many as there used to be, and one is the South China tiger, Panthera tigris amoyensis. It's said to be the “stem tiger,” the one from which other subspecies diverged. (Which doesn't imply that it has stayed unchanged since then.)

Sadly for the South China tiger, Mao Tse-Tung took against it in 1959, called it an enemy of the people, and instituted eradication programs. He didn't like flies or rats, either, but they resisted eradication better than tigers. “Paper tiger” is an old Chinese phrase for something that only looks scary. (Mao famously used it to describe the US and the Soviet Union.) Actually, real tigers never qualified as enemies of the people of China. The threat posed by real tigers was a paper tiger that Mao used as a propaganda device. They made great posters.

By the time the Chinese government, long after Mao, decided to preserve the magnificent South China tiger, they couldn't find any, except in zoos. It was said that a few survived. China had tiger expert Ron Tilson do a survey to tell them how many were left. The answer: zero.

The government also offered a reward for evidence of a wild South China tiger.

Not giving up, China's State Forestry Administration planned a system of tiger preserves. The idea is to set up protected areas, stock them with suitable tiger prey, and then add captive-born South China tigers from zoo stock. Programs were started to teach captive-born cubs hunting skills, one in Fujian province, one in South Africa. (Perhaps you have been told that there are no tigers in Africa. There aren't, except the ones doing junior year abroad.) The plan includes releasing tigers into preserves as part of the 2008 Olympic Games ballyhoo.

Then, last October, exciting news came that, despite Mao (and poachers), there were still wild tigers in South China. Zhou Zhenglong, a farmer and hunter in Shaanxi province, came forth with photos of a tiger in the woods, and of its footprints.

Wow! Press conference! Cash prize for Zhou!

Experts at the Shaanxi Forest Administration Bureau confirmed the pictures were authentic.  "[T]he tiger has been found again after more than 20 years." It was inspiring news.

But some people in China's internet community weren't so inspired. They pointed out certain discrepancies. Why did the tiger look so shiny? Why was its pose identical in each photo? Shaanxi officials stood by Zhou and their South China tiger. The internet investigators kept clamoring. Why did the tiger not only look exactly the same in each photo, but also, excuse us, why did it look exactly the same as this tiger poster?

Alas, it turns out that Zhou Zhenglong, that simple farmer, had employed his humble computer graphics skills, an old poster, and a fake tiger foot to produce his pictures and claim the prize. The Shaanxi forestry department backed down.

Ugh! New press conference! Jail for Zhou! Bitter references to paper tigers!

The South China tiger continues not to roam Shaanxi province, wild and free. But there are wild tigers in China. Up in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, bordering Russia, a few North China tigers roam. Their subspecies is Panthera tigris altaica, also called the Amur tiger or the Siberian tiger. They are beginning to get protection.

I'd like to see both the North and South China tigers protected. The South China tiger will first have to be reintroduced, a pathbreaking event. Since this zoo-bred population, deriving from few animals, will surely have slightly different bloodlines than the population that used to range South China, I suggest designating it a new subspecies. In honor of its history: Panthera tigris papyrus, the paper tiger.

From Evil, Turtles

I came across the story of the most endangered turtle in the world while researching the question of whether “worm stomping” in Wood Turtles is a cultural behavior. (Alas, no.) In Ronald Orenstein's Turtles, Tortoises and Terrapins: Survivors in Armor ">Turtles, Tortoises and Terrapins: Survivors in Armor (2001), I read of Aspideretes nigricans (formerly Trionyx nigricans), the Black Softshell turtle, or Bastami Softshell, which “survives for religious reasons. The entire population of some 400 animals is held in semi-captivity in an enclosed pond, or tank, about five miles from Chittagong, Bangladesh, where visitors and pilgrims feed them bread, bananas, and offal. The tank is attached to an Islamic shrine...” Other sources confirmed that it was “critically endangered,” “extinct in the wild,” and “the 'holy' turtle of Bangladesh.”

The shrine is of a ninth century Sufi mystic, Bayazid Bastami, of whom I had not previously heard. It is said, apparently, that Bastami encountered evil spirits, and turned them into turtles. What a nice man. He didn't bind them in eternal chains, cast them into flame, or even drive them out. He just turned them into turtles. From evil he brought good. Or if not from evil, good, at least from evil, turtles.

The former evil spirits are protected. Orenstein quotes an early report that “the turtles are so tame that they come to feed when called, placing their forefeet on the edge of the platform or even climbing upon it and stretching their necks out of the water. Some even allowed us to touch them, and ate pieces of chicken from wooden skewers held in our hands.”

The species was taxonomically described by J. Anderson in 1875. The general assumption was that the rest of the species had gone extinct in the wild and only these few captives hung on (like the Pere David's deer, a herd of which survived on the estate of the Emperor of China, while all the rest were exterminated). A few herpetologists suggested that the Bastami turtles were just a bunch of inbred descendants of A. hurum, the Peacock Softshell, or A. gangeticus, the Ganges Softshell. How insulting.

But now Peter Praschag and colleagues have done the mitochondrial DNA work and even some field work, and have illuminated the matter in a paper in Zoologica Scripta, complete with cladograms and excellent drawings of baby turtles. It is not true that the Bastami Softshells are merely inbred, aberrant, Peacock Softshells or inbred, aberrant, Ganges Softshells. They are a distinct species in their own right. (Praschag et al. advise changing their name to Nilssonia nigricans).

However, the DNA work indicates that they are the same species as some turtles in a pond next to the Kamakhya Tantra Temple in Assam. (Note to self: if build temple: install turtles. Query: charge pilgrims for turtle chow?) They are even the same species as a turtle that was caught swimming wild in the Jia Bhoroli River, also in Assam. Praschag et al. don't know how many Bastami Softshells are out there, but they figure it's a lot more than just the ones that hang around the shrine.

What a revelation! As a fan of plot and anecdote I would much prefer that the temple have the only Bastami Softshells in the world, saved from extinction by the pious – but as a crazed fan of fauna I am very glad there are more Bastami Softshells  in the world – saved from extinction by their own efforts.