While I sit here and do battle with what we’ll simply refer to as the Plague of Peoria, it seemed like a good time to whip out another post.  This could be a sad time or joyful moment depending on your feelings towards the Indy Zoo mammals that have been bombarding you as of late.  If you can’t get enough of them and sit there continually refreshing your browser until the next post arrives.. you are going to be on the disappointment side because this is the last of the mammal shots – well technically not the last because there is one more but that will be a little bit different than these.  Now if you are sick and tired of these and are looking for the Hank William’s Jr. concert post well, you can start dancing now (how about an endurance test – you stop dancing when the HW Jr. post is actually made hehehe).

There are a lot of similarities in this post to the last one.  First off it is again about the big cat family.  Secondly, it contains a head to head competition with a certain someone else.  That certain someone else is in a bit of a pickle at the moment due to having difficulty navigating around the house with that giant ego inflation she received in the last set of comments.  Unlike the last post, I am going to make it more objective – not going to tell you who shot the pictures – you pick your favorite one or two and we’ll let the chips fall where they may.  In the meantime I’m interviewing for new brothers just in case.

If you didn’t get the topic from the title, how about now..

Yes folks, we are talking about the cute but oh so deadly Tiger.  This is one of the sets of shots that need some background to get the feel for the difficulty involved.  This specific enclosure has a visitor viewing area that consists of thick glass – possibly plexiglass – hard to tell at the time, but clearly difficult conditions when you are trying to get enough light through and not produce the shadow images as it passes through the glass.   Linda did impress me with being able to pull this off having only recently been taught by yours truly how to shoot on Manual mode (she doesn’t bring that up much does she?!).  She’s like my little Padawan.

As mentioned before, it was good and hot out and this particular specimen was doing its best to remain cool.  This must be serious business when it comes to cats because this one seemed to be only thinking ONE thing – what would it take to make it through that glass and snack on these idiots with their cameras. It is possible that the Tiger coloring just makes it appear pissed but Tony the Tiger doesn’t look that threatening.

Hit the jump to read more about these bad-ass killers

Quick quiz.  Who is the baddest cat in the jungle?  If you said the Lion like I did then according to my research, you my friend are wrong.  Is this ANOTHER deception from my childhood education?  Since the day I learned about the lion it was always referred to as “King of the Jungle”.  By my definition King means the big enchilada, the uber-predator of the jungle or bow down before me and beg I take you to Misfit Island.  But NNNNNOOOOOOOOOO (in my best Belushi imitation).  Turns out the tiger is the largest of the cat species.  Tiggers can tip the 650lb mark where puny lions are somewhere in the 550lb range.  I swear I deserve a rebate in some form from my early education years.  Add on to that my belief that cats hate water…

I can see in his face the complete distaste for the water .. not.   As with the Cheetahs, the markings on Tigers are like fingerprints – unique per cat.  Thanks to our friends over at Wikipedia I am now the proud owner of the information tidbit that these markings are actually in their skin – shave them and they retain the marking.  Unfortunately, I cannot tell if you this is the same with Cheetahs.  Oh, and you can tell the females from the males by their forepaws – males are larger.  So that means this specimen is a umm a ummm – crap.

If you are wondering White Tigers are not albino tigers.  They are simply colored white and a result of rare gene and unlike the yellow iris of standard tigers, they have blue.  Apparently trying to breed White Tigers is fraught with problems due to inbreeding defects.  So those cool Tigers you keep fawning over at the Mirage… probably have like 9 toes a paw.

Speaking of toes, I need to address something about my title.  I actually had NO idea that this little rhyme can have racist connotations.  When I was a youngster this was the stupid mechanism to count out an individual among a group.  Clearly a gimmick against the stupid because any smart counter can manipulate the syllables to pick whoever they wanted.  According to Wikipedia (yes, they even have entry on this rhyme) there are multiple variations of the rhyme.  My time and region used the If He Hollers Make Him Pay 50 Dollars Every Day version.  Which when you think about is dumb – Tigers don’t have any pockets!

What I was not prepared for was the more racist versions of this rhyme that are also detailed in the Wikipedia entry.  Versions that appear to have originated in the Americas in the 1888s – some 50+ years from the emergence of the first versions.  I am not bringing that up to dignify it, rather to point out the fact this actually resulted in a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines when a steward used a variation (without the racist portion) as a cute encouragement for people to take their seats.  Apparently someone claimed emotional distress – the lawsuit was settled in Southwest’s favor (and appeals denied) – strangely enough I don’t recall any lawsuits against the latest Tarantino effort.

We’ve come to the end – so what do you think of the shots?  We’re they  all Grrrrrrrrrtttt! or just the ones I took hehehe.  Make your preferences known and I’ll edit the comments ummm I mean we’ll see what everyone has to say.  Hope you enjoyed this beautiful creature whose currently fighting for their species survival – they are listed on the conservation scale as Endangered (only 3-4 thousand left in the wild).  Maybe that is why this one looks so defiant – remorse of the struggle being raged by his brothers in the wild.