Tigers

Tigers are four-legged mammals of the animal kingdom of the feline infraorder. In taxonomy, their official biological classification is "big-ass cat". Tigers are easily distinguishable from other big-ass cats by their orange and white fur and black vertical striping down the sides of their body. They also have a penchant for eating certain brands of breakfast cereal, which they regard as "grrrrrrreat!" Tigers can be found in various parts of Asia such as India, Turkey, Southeast Asia and even Siberia - home of the... you guessed it -- Siberian Tiger. Tigers may also be found in fictional, mystical kingdoms such as the land of Oz. As Dorothy Gale herself once intoned, "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" Tigers usually walk about on all fours, but some prefer a position of crouching, particularly if there is a hidden dragon nearby (Yeah, okay... that was one editor's lame attempt at a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon joke).


 * As referenced above, the 1939 fantasy feature The Wizard of Oz implied that the tigers existed in the land of Oz, though no tigers were actually seen.


 * Tigers were seen in the 1943 adventure film Captive Wild Woman.


 * In the 1967 Disney animated feature The Jungle Book, the primary antagonist of the story was a talking Bengal tiger named Shere Khan. Voiced by George Sanders, Shere Khan feared and despised humans because of their skill with fire and firearms and sought to kill the "man-cub" named Mowgli. Mowgli drove Shere Khan off by taking some flaming branches and tying them to his tail.


 * Disney revisited "tiger mania" a year later with Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. Amongst the various anthropomorphised animals, there was a tiger with spring-coiled tail that allowed him to bounce all over the place named Tigger. Tigger was one of the mainstay characters of the Pooh family and received his own animated feature film, The Tigger Movie in 2000.


 * In the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola war epic Apocalypse Now, a Patrol Boat, River unit led by Benjamin L. Willard encounter a tiger in the jungles near the Nung River in Vietnam while on a mission to find rogue Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.


 * Rajah was a tiger seen in the 1992 animated movie Aladdin by Walt Disney Productions. He was the pet of Princess Jasmine and was fiercely protective of her, fending off potential suitors by taking a bit out of the seat of their pants. Rajah liked Aladdin however. Unlike Shere Khan from The Jungle Book, Rajah was a non-speaking tiger.


 * Tigers were seen stalking some Romans in the 2000 Ridley Scott film Gladiator in the year 180 AD. During one of the battles involving centurion-turned-gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius, guards from the Colosseum use tigers to interfere with Maximus' battle to put him at a disadvantage.
 * Tigress is a female talking tiger and leader of the Furious Five in the 2008 computer animated film Kung Fu Panda. She is the most hostile to Po when he's chosen as the Dragon Warrior, but eventually accepts him when he defeats the evil snow leopard Tai Lung.


 * A tiger bearing the human name Richard Parker was the companion of an Indian man named Piscine Molitor "Pi" Pate in the 2012 movie Life of Pi. Both Pi and the Bengal tiger are shipwrecked and floating adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Ang Lee really has a thing for tigers.

Other uses

 * In the 1960s, "Tiger" was a common slang nickname that people would call one another if the liked them. Usually females said this to males. The term really isn't used in modern context anymore, but it should be noted that Mary Jane Watson from the Spider-Man comic book and subsequent film adaptations referred to Peter Parker as Tiger.


 * Tiger Kung Fu, also known as Hei hu quan, is a Chinese martial arts form that originated in Shandong Province in China. Tigress from the 2008 computer animated movie Kung Fu Panda practices this discipline.