Three-month-old Amur tiger cubs Amaliya explores her outdoor enclosure for the first time with their mother Dari at the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, Minn. on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024. (AP photo/Mark Vancleave)
There are 7,000 tigers living in private facilities in the U.S., including roadside zoos, ranches and your typical rich crackpot’s house. This is more than the 5,000 tigers estimated to still live in the wild. A new study looks at American tigers — mostly descended from captive animals brought into the U.S. for circuses and zoos in the early 1900s — to see what their genetic diversity situation is, to help determine potential suitability for rewilding. The study looked at 138 privately owned tigers and found that they don’t have a ton of unique variation, but nevertheless have genetic diversity on par with wild populations.
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