Topic summary

Sumatran tiger

Sumatran tiger

The Sumatran tiger is a population of Panthera tigris sondaica on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It is the only surviving tiger population in the Sunda Islands, as the Bali and Javan tigers went extinct during the 20th century.

Sequences from complete mitochondrial genes of 34 tigers support the hypothesis that Sumatran tigers are diagnostically distinct from existing mainland subspecies. In 2017, the Cat Classification Task Force of the Cat Specialist Group revised felid taxonomy and recognizes the living and extinct tiger populations in Indonesia as P. t. sondaica.