A team of ecologists and zoologists found a hair sample belonging to a Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) on the island of Java. The species was believed to be extinct. However, according to this, the Javan tiger would not be extinct. It seems likely that a small population of these predators is still preserved in the island’s forests.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature and its Resources declared the Javan and Balinese tigers extinct in 2008 and 2013, respectively. Previously, the animals had not been seen in the wild for more than 30 years. The last sighting was in 1976. Only the Sumatran tiger remains, which is also considered endangered.
Comparative DNA
Already after 2008, there were isolated reports of the Javan tiger, but without conclusive evidence. In August 2019, a local resident and conservationist named Ripi Yanur Fajar claimed to have seen a tiger outside a village in West Java. He reported the sighting to an investigator, Kalih Raksasewu, who, together with a government employee, Bambang Adryanto, went to visit the site of the alleged sighting.
They found footprints and claw marks that they thought could have been made by a tiger. Clinging to a fence that separates the town road from a plantation was a single lock of hair.
The DNA from the hair was compared to that of a specimen of Javan tiger hair kept at the Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense in Indonesia. The study showed similar characteristics, the genetic distance between her and the museum’s Javan tiger was 0.3%.
“From this exhaustive mitochondrial DNA analysis, we conclude that the hair sample from South Sukabumi belongs to the Javan tiger, and that it belongs to the same group as the Javan tiger specimen collected at the museum in 1930.” », declare the authors of the research in their published article. Even if this tiger population is still alive, it will most likely not thrive and needs urgent protection.
Java tiger
The Javan tiger was endemic to the area, but humans hunted it and exterminated it as a pest. The animal’s habitat on the island was altered in favor of agricultural development and forests were cleared for plantations. The fact that the Javan tiger still exists in the wild needs to be confirmed by further genetic and field research. Local authorities plan to install camera traps in the area where the animal may be found and continue studying the available hair samples.
The study was published in the journal Oryx.
