Submitted by chosen-username t3_126q8v6 in explainlikeimfive
Mammoth-Mud-9609 t1_jea8krc wrote
Siberia is huge and largely empty of humans, giving plenty of space for tigers to hunt and their thick coats help them resist the cold.
chosen-username OP t1_jea9d1u wrote
Were there tigers in Scandinavia in historical times? It was still pretty empty in Roman times for instance.
Mammoth-Mud-9609 t1_jea9rqm wrote
Nope tigers were never present in either Europe or Africa.
chosen-username OP t1_jea9ucy wrote
Why?
Mammoth-Mud-9609 t1_jeaahhw wrote
They evolved in Asia and would need to cross terrain that isn't good for tigers to hunt in.
chosen-username OP t1_jeaayz9 wrote
Was there ever a tiger-like large cat in Northern Europe? (Not limited to Scandinavia)
Mammoth-Mud-9609 t1_jeacqhf wrote
There were lions in Europe.
chosen-username OP t1_jeacuje wrote
How far north did their range extend?
Mammoth-Mud-9609 t1_jeagg0r wrote
In human civilisations Greece was about as far north as they got further north and the wolves and bears were far better suited to the conditions.
Target880 t1_jeae2f2 wrote
Not really. The has been a lion in Greece and the Balkans up to Hungary and Ukraine. The last one survives in part of Greece until 4th century AD.
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Northern Europe has quite recently been covered with ice and human migration has followed the retreat of the ice. The large ice cover had its largest extent 20 000 years ago when it ended in northern Germany.
The lynx is the largest feline, wolf, and bears are the largest predators.
Exactly what life was there before the last ice age is unknown. A kilometer-thick layer of ice even smooths out the bedrock so there is no evidence of what lived in Scandinavia before the ice retreated. That is lived recently before it, there is evidence od what lived millions of a year ago in for example sandstone formations.
Lithuim t1_jeaco9c wrote
There were prehistoric lion species in north/central Europe during the ice age, as far north as the UK.
Scandinavia was largely covered in glaciers at the time so I don’t think their range extended that far north.
ADDeviant-again t1_jebn7pl wrote
Yeah, there used to be lions and leopards all over Europe during the ice ages. They may not have been that far north, though, because there were glaciers covering that far.
We used to have jaguars in Canada overhead in N.America.
Antman013 t1_jecjql2 wrote
Still have Cougars . . . and not just in Toronto dance Clubs.
TapataZapata t1_jebwf4q wrote
A long time ago, there were some species of saber-toothed cats. Today there's the lynx, much smaller, and, just at the edge to Asia, a leopard subspecies.
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