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Mangroves are woody trees or shrubs that grow in mangrove habitats or mangal (Hogarth, 1999). The mangrove is often considered a type of biome. Mangrove habitat is exclusively tropical and tidal, and therefore having soil or sediment that is water-logged and saline or of variable salinity. Areas where mangal occurs includes estuaries and marine shorelines. A wide variety of plant species can be found in mangrove habitat, but some 54 species in 20 genera, belonging to 16 families constitute the "true mangroves" — species that occur exclusively in mangrove habitats and rarely elsewhere (Hogarth, 1999).

Growing in the intertidal areas and estuary mouths between land and sea, where the salty water from the sea is continuously mixed with the sweet water from the rivers, mangroves provide critical habitat for a diverse marine and terrestrial flora and fauna. Healthy mangrove forests are key to a healthy marine ecology.

Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.

Tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black.

Main article: Golden tabby A rare golden tabby/strawberry tiger at the Buffalo Zoo. In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry." Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal.[50] There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Some golden tabby tigers, called heterozygous tigers, carry the white tiger gene, and when two such tigers are mated, can produce some stripeless white offspring. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers.