Tiger Close-Up, 1995
Photograph by Michael Nichols
A wary tiger flashes a toothy snarl in this extreme close-up. Tigers are thought to have evolved in China more than a million years ago, prowling west toward the Caspian Sea, north to Siberia, and south across Indochina and Indonesia. Today, three of the original eight tiger subspecies are extinct, and hunting and habitat loss have reduced populations from hundreds of thousands of animals to perhaps fewer than 2,500.
