THE NEW YORK TIMES - In 2020, the Netflix documentary series “Tiger King” introduced the world to America’s large population of captive tigers. Estimates by experts suggest there may be as many as 7,000 of the big cats in the United States today, while only around 5,500 tigers survive in the wild in other countries.
More than 99 percent of those American tigers live in unaccredited roadside zoos, private residences or sanctuaries. Conservationists have long wondered what types of tigers make up this population and whether their genetic material could help increase the number of tigers in the wild.
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In 2018, Ellie E. Armstrong, an author of the study and an assistant professor of evolutionary genomics at the University of California, Riverside, set out to establish the ancestry of America’s captive tigers.
“There was a lot of hearsay about these tigers but no facts,” Dr. Armstrong said.