Tiger appears on trail camera with three cubs. Hear them ‘practicing their roars’
In a shadowy forest of eastern Thailand, a mother tiger moved through the trees with her three cubs running around her paws. Unbeknownst to the family, a nearby trail camera recorded their movements.
A trail camera in the Dawna Tenasserim Landscape, a large forest along the Thailand-Myanmar border, filmed the “three playful tiger cubs” following their mother and “practicing their roars,” the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said in an April 29 announcement.
A YouTube video shared by the WWF’s Panda Hub on April 28 shows the tiger family. The mother appears first, quickly followed by the cubs. The group stops, and the cubs make several scratchy, high-pitched sounds.
Moments later, the mother tiger carefully steps over her cubs and continues walking out of the camera’s view. The cubs sit for a few seconds longer before following her into the forest, the video shows.
WWF described the sighting as “a delightful result of decades of wild tiger conservation efforts to improve habitat, increase availability of prey, and reduce the threat of poaching across the country.”
Tigers are the world’s “largest cat species” and iconic predators known for their distinctive striped coats, according to Thai National Parks. The species is considered endangered because, “over the past 100 years, they have lost 93% of their historic range.”
Tiger conservation efforts over the past several decades have helped slow the species’ decline and stabilize some populations, but habitat loss and poaching still threaten these big cats, Thai officials said.
“Last year, Thailand announced that its tiger population is increasing after years of stable population,” the WWF said. “This achievement made Thailand the first country in Southeast Asia to increase its tiger population.”
The country’s conservation efforts are still ongoing.
The Dawna Tenasserim Landscape “has some of the largest remaining areas of contiguous tropical moist and deciduous forests in Southeast Asia,” the WWF said. About 36% of the region falls within “protected areas in Thailand and proposed protected areas in Myanmar.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2025 at 12:09 PM with the headline "Tiger appears on trail camera with three cubs. Hear them ‘practicing their roars’."
