When I research photos for the National Geographic Found Tumblr, I’m often looking for images that inspire more questions or slightly alter the way you see history and reality. When I stumbled across Michael “Nick” Nichols’ 1996 image of a Siberian tiger cub in a playpen, a hundred questions immediately jumped into my head. Where was this cub, and who put it in a playpen? Music video shots of rapper “Tyga’s” mansion with a tiger cub in the corner of a room started to play in my mind.

Nichols is a staff photographer and editor at large at National Geographic magazine who has been photographing endangered species for well over 20 years. I spoke with him