A big animal, snapped by a TV station staffer in a forest of central China's Hunan Province and first identified as an endangered South China tiger, has been positively identified Monday as a Siberian tiger on the loose from a circus in northeast China.

A photographer with the Pingjiang county TV station reported to the local forestry bureau that "he had unintentionally captured on film a big animal" on March 19, and asked for confirmation of its identity.

Media in Hunan speculated that this was a wild South China tiger, and attracted the attention of the whole country.

From March 20 to 23, the provincial forestry bureau sent two work teams to the site where the pictures were shot and preliminary findings confirm that the "big animal" was a type of tiger.

Further investigation, made on the comparison of shapes, texture, footprints, and other features between South China and Siberian tigers, showed that the snapped tiger was indeed the latter.

The investigation also traced the pictures back to a circus, which was then making performance tour in Hunan. No one knows yet how the tiger managed to escape from the circus.

The tiger's tale comes in the wake of a scandal which also riveted the attention of the whole country back in October when villager Zhou Zhenglong in northwest Shaanxi Province managed to shoot some 30 pictures of what he claimed was a wild South China tiger, an endangered species.

South China tigers have not been seen in the wild since the 1980s, and if true this picture was worth a lot of money. Zhou Zhenglong, who proclaimed that he risked his life to shoot the picture, was soon hailed a hero, and the pictures were publicized by the local forestry department, as a boost to tourism.

However, the photographs were soon questioned. Netizens doubted the pictures, and said they, and even the tiger itself, were faked.

The national forestry ministry formed an investigation team on October 24, but their report remains unknown.

The Shaanxi Forestry Department, which announced that the tiger had been spotted, said sorry for publicising the photos, but has said nothing about their authenticity. The department apologised in a letter sent to Xinhua.

"We didn't have a spot investigation before we held the press conference," the letter said.

"We curtly released the discovery of the South China tiger without substantial proof, which reflects our blundering manner and lax discipline."

(Xinhua News Agency March 25, 2008)