Tracking the super cats

Of all charismatic animals, tigers are surely the most filmed, televised, documented, noisily cherished and, paradoxically, the most persecuted on Earth. It is also probably the one wild mammal more people wish to see than any other. In Asia, images of striped cats are indivisible from the modern tourist industries of several countries, especially India and Nepal.

Yet this is not the case for the most impressive of all tiger populations, which is the race found in Siberia. Just to give you a sense of its stature: most Bengal tigers weigh about 150kg, but this relative from south-easternmost Russia can be more than twice as heavy.

The Korean author of this extraordinary book describes a moment when he investigates the claw marks left by one of these super cats, a male called Khajain. The dagger lines carved into the tree trunk stand way over Sooyong Park’s head at more than 3 metres.