You should see my brother, he’s much bigger

Sumatran Tiger, originally uploaded by http://andrewskelton.net.

There are only 300 of these creatures left in the wild… 300 – that’s less than there are overpaid, pampered, narcissistic soccer players in the whole of the British Premiership (when you take into account subs etc.) – I’m not sure if it’s obvious (!!!) but I have very little time for one of these two groups, and it’s not the critically endangered one from an island that is part of Indonesia. The Sumatran Tiger, as I’ve described before, is the smallest of all of the tiger species but it’s by no means small – though I did smile whilst watching these big cats when one of the general public was in awe of their size. It reminded me of the scene in Crocodile Dundee where the hero is confronted by a ne’er-do-well who pulls a knife, you know the scene don’t you, when told that this nefarious type has a knife, to wit he replies – “That’s not a knife… this is a knife” and pulls out a machete. Well, if they think that the Sumatran Tiger is big.. then they need to be in close proximity to a Siberian Tiger which can be twice the size of their more diminutive relatives.

Following on from my observations yesterday about the different facial features of the various lions I’ve photographed, I think the same is true for tigers. Obviously, their stripes are as unique as our finger prints but look at the shape of it’s face, the length of it’s nose, it’s eyes… it’s eyes are particularly different. Time for more research I thing. Whilst watching these cats, which were unusually active – normally they just lay about all day asleep (nice work if you can get it) – one of them came right up to the cage front where I was standing, and mewed like a cat… it was very very cute.

I had a very strange experience today; I went to a sporting event, children’s rugby, and I purposefully didn’t take a camera with me (or even two cameras) though of course I’m not including camera phones in this – whilst they can produce some passable images, they’re not what I’d call great, though they are useful to have on you at all times. Mind you, camera phones don’t have the same cost involved when things go wrong.. such as tripod collars sticking – I must contact Canon this week and warn the postal service about the sizable parcel that needs delivering, their profits are going to increase this year.

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