On July 29 the world celebrates the International Tiger Day. The Amur Tiger Centre has prepared the ‘Tigers in the city’ large-scale educational project to introduce striped predators as well as other unique Far East inhabitants to citizens of Moscow.
This project unites three grand events at a time, one of which is the ‘Striped express’ launch in the Moscow metro. The train was developed by the Amur Tiger Centre along with the ANO ‘Far Eastern Leopards’, Russian Geographical Society and the Moscow Metro.
Eight carriages are the eight bright chapters of a single story about beasts’ daily routine and communications with the human. Each chapter contains facts, infographics and interactive data, which displays outstanding history of small helpless tiger and leopard cubs becoming the world’s most perfect hunters.
‘The forgotten state’. This is an introductory chapter containing all the basic information about Amur tigers and Far Eastern leopards. Infographics comprises data on the number of species, the habitat map as well as on biological characteristics.
‘The paternal home’ chapter is dedicated to little kittens coming into life, from mating habits of the parents till first appearance of awkward cubs into light.
‘Going out into the world’ tells about the grown-up co-brothers that are ready to live and hunt on their own. As a matter of fact, this is a description of distinct characteristics of the Far East cats.
‘The lands of Tsar’ chapter describes the Far Eastern habitat in detail. Tigers and leopards take the top of the region’s ecosystem being directly dependent on the territory mates and influencing their population. In addition, each rare cat has preference in choosing pieces of land.
‘The Art of Hunt’. This carriage is dedicated to tricks of fending in the harsh Far East conditions, description of the habitat and favorite specialties of the gourmand-predators.
‘The external enemy’. Poaching remains the main reason for reduction of the Far East leopard and the Amur tiger population. Prejudice, ignorant belief as well as evident greed for gain still kill one of the beautiful species day by day. Another factor of the territory reduction is human activity and its results.
‘Union of the strong’. The human, being dangerous to the tiger, is also the most reliable friend and defender of the Amur tiger and the Far East leopard. The chapter explains the most advanced non-contacting research methods, enumeration methods and conflict-resolving methods.
Experts of the Amur Tiger Centre and the ANO Far Eastern Leopards provided that the information, stated in the carriage, was reliable while the leading young illustrators from all over Russia, such as Victor Gaus, Egor Golopolossov, Ilya Speshinskiy and others provided the visual content.
It had been the first time ever that the neural net was a full-scale designer of a carriage (Prisma application of the Prisma labs developer). Founders of the company provided to the project sources of their own taught neural system. Taking pictures of the Amur tiger, the Far East leopard and picturesque views of their habitat as a base point, it created pictures of its own.
Thanks to the creative cooperation, each carriage is decorated in unique style. Thousands of kilometers of taiga, placed on a single train, change through the carriages, leaving no place for the monotony.
This train symbolizes the long-term cooperation between the Amur Tiger Centre and the ANO Far Eastern Leopards. Both organizations are in charge with studying, preserving and restoring the world’s rarest big cats’ population. That is the reason why the Amur tiger got underground with the Far East leopard and will accompany passengers of the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya line till the end of the year.