Mike the Tiger - History

LSU adopted the tiger as its enduring mascot after earlier alternatives faded, and from 1896 to 1924 students carried paper-maché tigers to football games until opposing fans destroyed them. On October 21, 1936, Mike I arrived, named in honor of athletic trainer Chellis "Mike" Chambers, who was most responsible for bringing the first live mascot to LSU. Mike I, originally called "Sheik," served for 20 years before dying of pneumonia, followed by Mike II, whose brief reign ended after the 1957 season when he also died of pneumonia in the spring of 1958. Mike III arrived for the 1958 national championship season and served 18 seasons, dying after LSU's 5-6 record in 1975; Mike IV reigned for 14 years, retired to the Baton Rouge Zoo in 1990, and was euthanized because of poor health in March 1995 at age 20. Mike V was introduced in February 1990, officially began his reign on April 30, 1990, and died on May 18, 2007, at age 17. Mike VI arrived in Baton Rouge on Aug. 25, 2007; the Bengali Siberian mix, formerly called "Roscoe," presided over a football national title in his first year and later a 2011 Southeastern Conference championship and perfect regular season. Born July 23, 2005, Mike VI came to LSU from an Indiana rescue facility at age two weighing 320 pounds and was expected to reach about 500 pounds. His habitat, across from Tiger Stadium, includes natural substrates, grass, LSU renaissance architectural elements, and educational information on the six living tiger subspecies, and its enclosure covers 13,000 square feet. Most active in the early morning and evening, he sleeps much of the day, receives about 100,000 visitors each year, eats 140 pounds of formulated zoo carnivore diet weekly, and is cared for daily by two veterinary students under the oversight of a personal veterinarian from the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine. Mike also serves to educate the public about tiger preservation and habitat conservation worldwide. Around 1900, about 100,000 tigers lived in the wild in Asia across eight subspecies ranging from Turkey to the Caspian Sea and from southeastern Russia to the islands of Indonesia. Today, with the Malayan subspecies created from the Indochinese, three subspecies are extinct and about 90 percent of the world's wild tiger population is gone, leaving approximately 3,200 wild tigers. The major causes of this decline are hunting, habitat loss, lack of food sources, fragmentation of populations that reduces breeding partners and weakens the gene pool, and poaching for skins, bones, and other body parts used in medicines in Asia.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana · United States