If you’re like me, you think of tigers as huge cats that run around killing stuff in the jungle. That assumption seems reasonable, as you can find them in places like India and southeast Asia. What doesn’t seem reasonable is that they are orange. That’s kind of bad color for being a sneaky predator. Well, I had a lot to learn.

Back in the day, I was actually friends with a tiger. Fortunately for me, she was raised in captivity, otherwise I would probably be dead. Tigers are the largest living cats in the world, and as someone who would physically play with one – they are huge. Female tigers are supposed to be between 143 – 368 pounds (65 – 167 kg), but I’m rather large for a human, and she seemed bigger than that to me. Males are twice that size. Their behavior is very similar to that of a house cat, though one that could tear you to shreds with little effort.

I actually knew very little about these majestic creatures, so let’s get into it.

First of all, the image I had in my head of a big orange cat stalking through a very green jungle is completely incorrect. Tigers prefer prey like deer, boar, or even water buffalo – things that don’t necessarily live in the jungle.

Even if tigers only ate monkeys or other more jungle-esque creatures, their orange coloring wouldn’t matter anyway. It turns out that their prey animals don’t see color very well. Green, orange, yellow, and red all look like the same kind of thing. Now that I think about it, it’s like human hunters wearing blaze orange. Duh.

I also have incorrectly been thinking that Siberian tigers are white. No, they are orange too, but tigers come in other colors as well. There are white tigers, they just don’t have to be of the Siberian variety. They also come in black, and many variations of the orange theme.

Unfortunately, tigers are an endangered species because humans are jerks. There are only about 5000 left in the wild, with the vast majority located in India.

So tigers are orange because… why not? They could be neon pink and their prey wouldn’t notice anyway.