According to Science alert, this critically endangered predator is the only one of the living tiger population left roaming the Sunda Islands in Indonesia.
Carly Cassella
For decades, scientists had seen neither skin nor fur of the Sumatran tiger's relative - the Javan tiger - which once prowled Indonesia's most populated island.
In 2008, after a century of merciless hunting and habitatloss , the Javan tiger was declared extinct.
But that's not where its story ends. In 2019, ten years after scientists had given up hope, the fur of an alleged tiger was plucked from obscurity.
On August 18, Ripi Yanur Fajar, a local resident and conservationist, claimed to have seen a tiger outside a village in West Java.
He reported the sighting to Kalih Raksasewu, an investigator, who, together with Bambang Adryanto, a civil servant, went to visit the site of the alleged sighting.
They both saw footprints and claw marks that, according to them, could have been made by a tiger. Clinging to a fence separating the village road from a plantation was a single strand of hair.
In March 2022, the discovery was submitted for genetic analysis at the Biological Research Center for Indonesia's National Research and Innovation.
In the study, published in the journal Oryx, the results were compared with Sumatran tigers and a 1930s museum specimen of a Javan tiger, both of which are thought to belong to the same subspecies - Panthera tigris sondaica.
The mystery thread matched the genetics of the Sumatran tiger with 97% similarity. The genetic distance between it and the museum's Javan tiger was 0.3%.
"From this comprehensive mtDNA analysis, we conclude that the fur sample from South Sukabumi belongs to the Javan tiger and that it falls into the same group as the museum specimen of the Javan tiger collected in 1930″, conclude the authors of the research, including Raksasewu and Adryanto.
"If the Javan tiger still exists in the wild, it needs to be confirmed with further genetic and field studies."
Even if this tiger population is still alive, it is very likely that itis not thriving and urgently needs protection.
For centuries, the Java tiger has been scattered throughout the scrubby forests. But today, Java is the most populated island in the world - more than half the population of Indonesia. To support all these humans, much of the tiger'shabitat was destroyed to make way for agriculture.
As farms took over the forest and the tiger's native prey sources dwindled, the predators turned to cattle and were hunted like a plague for decades.
By the 1970s, only about a dozen Javan tigers were scattered across wildlife reserves and national parks in East and West Java. Many of these individuals disappeared in the following years.
Over the years, people living in Java have rarely reported sightings of tigers and footprints. Although none have been confirmed, some locals suspect that the deaths of their livestock have been caused by tigers lurking nearby.
The discovery of tiger fur in West Java lends credibility to past alleged encounters, but does not necessarily bring hope for the animals' futures.
A rápida perda de habitat está a ocorrer em Java, restam pouco mais de 2% das suas florestas de planície originais e alguns especialistas receiam que toda a biodiversidade desapareça em breve.
