Sports hunters have long loved to bag Sumatran tigers, great hunters themselves. Like all tigers, they hunt alone and prefer to sneak up behind their prey. The light-reflective retinas in their eyes give them extraordinary vision that allows them to search for victims in near total darkness. Inch for inch, the Sumatran tiger's coat has more stripes than any other tiger subspecies and the varying black stripes against a tawny background provide perfect camouflage. They also use their twitching tails to communicate with each other.
Tigers are victims of poaching, habitat loss and population fragmentation.
It's illegal to kill a Sumatran tiger, but poachers still risk arrest because of the booming black-market trade in tiger bones, whiskers and body parts for Chinese folk medicines. As forests are cut down for farming and development, tigers cannot find the enough food. Another problem is population fragmentation, which occurs when groups of tigers become separated by farms and villages. This has led to inbreeding, which weakens an already faltering species. Poachers shoot hundreds of tigers each year, burying the skins and taking the bones.