page_title: Caspian tiger
section_title: Behaviour and ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Caspian tiger / Behaviour and ecology
context_page_description: The Caspian tiger was a Panthera tigris tigris population native to eastern Turkey, northern Iran, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus around the Caspian Sea through Central Asia to northern Afghanistan and Xinjiang in western China. It inhabited sparse forests and riverine corridors in this region until the 1970s. This population was assessed as extinct in 2003.
  Felis virgata was the scientific name proposed in 1815 by Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger for tigers in the Caspian Sea area. It was traditionally recognised as a distinct subspecies, Panthera tigris virgata. However, results of phylogeographic analysis indicate that the Caspian and Siberian tiger populations shared a common continuous geographic distribution until the early 19th century.
  Some Caspian tiger individuals were intermediate in size between Siberian and Bengal tigers.
  The Caspian tiger was also called Balkhash tiger, Hyrcanian tiger, Turanian tiger, and Babre Mazandaran, depending on the region of its occurrence.
context_section_description: No information is available for home ranges of Caspian tigers. In search for prey, they possibly prowled widely and followed migratory ungulates from one pasture to another. 
  Wild pigs and cervids probably formed their main prey base. In many regions of Central Asia, Bactrian deer and roe deer were important prey species, as well as Caucasian red deer, goitered gazelle in Iran; Eurasian golden jackals, jungle cats, locusts, and other small mammals in the lower Amu-Darya River area; saiga, wild horses, Persian onagers in Miankaleh peninsula; Turkmenian kulans, Mongolian wild asses, and mountain sheep in the Zhana-Darya and around the Aral Sea; Manchurian wapiti and moose in the area of Lake Baikal. They caught fish in flooded areas and irrigation channels. In winter, they frequently attacked dogs and livestock straying away from herds. They preferred drinking water from rivers, and drank from lakes in seasons when water was less brackish.
caption: Mosaic of an elephant attacking a tiger, from Roman Syria, which occupied parts of what is now Anatolia and Mesopotamia[37]
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