Abstract:
Like other members of the Panthera genus,
tigers are threatened throughout their range. Given their
conservation status research focused on their population
dynamics in the wild is needed, including population
growth, lifespan, and breeding success, which requires
reliable estimates of age. Current techniques to estimate
age in tigers are either not reliable and/or difficult to
apply in the field. Gum-line recession accurately estimates
age for mountain lions, but has never been tested for
tigers. The goal of this study was to determine whether
gum-line recession of the upper canine teeth is a reliable
indicator of age in tigers and if so, to define the equation
that enables age estimation. We measured gum-line recession
in 12 individuals of known ages and performed linear
regression analysis to investigate the validity of this technique
for tigers. We found a strong relationship between
gum-line recession and age, where the model provided
reliable age estimates for animals within 1-year age classes
in 10 out of 12 tigers measured, providing increased
accuracy over current methods.
