Captive tigers in the United States outnumber those living in the wild. The World Wildlife Federation estimates around 5,000 of the big cats reside in the U.S., mostly owned by private citizens.
The health of this population is a genetic mystery for conservation groups and researchers interested in how the captive tigers could help stabilize or restore wild tiger populations. Are the privately owned animals just like tigers in the wild, or do they reflect characteristics popular in the illegal trade? Are they a hodgepodge of wild tiger ancestry, or are they detrimentally inbred?
New research from Stanford University, published Sept. 19 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, digs into these questions and offers a new tool that conservationists and law enforcement can use to protect the animals and prosecute those responsible for their abuse.
"We're trying to leverage genomic technology to be useful in a conservation context—there are so few tigers. We won't get a second chance if they go extinct," said Ellie Armstrong, Ph.D., who is lead author of the paper.
An unknown population
