Royal White Tigers (Panthera tigris, Linnaeus 1758) at Zoo
d'Amnéville (Amneville Zoo), Amneville, Lorraine, France.*

By: Dr. Sc. Norman Ali Bassam Ali Taher Khalaf-Sakerfalke von Jaffa.


*Note: This article was published in "Gazelle: The Palestinian
Biological Bulletin". Number 78, June 2008, pp. 1-26.

Article Reference:
Khalaf-Sakerfalke von Jaffa, Dr. Sc. Norman Ali Bassam Ali Taher
(2008). Royal White Tigers (Panthera tigris, Linnaeus 1758) at Zoo
d'Amnéville (Amneville Zoo), Amneville, Lorraine, France. Gazelle:
The Palestinian Biological Bulletin. Number 78, June 2008. pp. 1-26.
Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
http://www.geocities.com/jaffacity/White_Tiger_Amneville.html &
http://www.geocities.com/jaffacity/White_Tiger_Amneville_R.html


On Sunday 15.06.2008 I visited the Amneville Zoo (Zoo d'Amnéville),
Amneville, Lorraine Region in France, and was accompanied by my
mother Renate Khalaf, my wife Ola Khalaf and my daughter Nora
Khalaf. The weather was cloudy and rainy, with temperature around
15° Celsius.
The Zoo d'Amnéville is a quite young Zoo which was created in 1986
in Amnéville, near Metz, France. There are more than 1600 animals,
from 260 species, from 5 Continents. Entrance Fee is 23 Euro for
adults, and 18 Euro for children.
The Zoo exhibit many Felid species: The Lion / Le Lion [in French]
(Panthera leo), Siberian Tiger / Tigre de Siberie (Panthera tigris
altaica), Sumatran Tiger / Tigre de Sumatra (Panthera tigris
sumatrae), White Tiger / Tigre Blanc (Panthera tigris), Snow
Leopard / Leopard Des Neiges (Panthera uncia) or (Uncia uncia),
Persian Leopard / Panthere ou Leopard de Perse (Panthera pardus
saxicolor), Black Panther / Panthere Noire (Panthera pardus), Puma
(Felis concolor) or (Puma concolor), Cheetah / Guepard (Acinonyx
jubatus), Jaguar (Panthera onca), Lynx (Felis lynx) or (Lynx lynx),
Caracal (Felis caracal) or (Caracal caracal), Serval (Felis serval)
or (Leptailurus serval), Fishing Cat / Chat Viverrin (Prionailurus
viverrinus), Wild Cat / Chat Sauvage D'Eurasie (Felis silvestris)
and the Sand Cat / Chat Du Desert (Felis margarita).
The Royal White Tigers are a new addition to the Zoo. They came on
21 March 2008. I saw two white tigers in a big enclosure; both were
sitting and relaxing, and then they stood up and began licking
themselves.
The White Tiger:


The White Tiger (Panthera tigris, Linnaeus 1758) is a tiger with a
genetic condition that nearly eliminates pigment in the normally
orange fur although they still have dark stripes. This occurs when a
tiger inherits two copies of the recessive gene for the paler
coloration: pink nose, grey-mottled skin, ice-blue eyes, and white
to cream-coloured fur with black, grey, or chocolate-coloured
stripes. (Another genetic condition also makes the stripes of the
tiger very pale; white tigers of this type are called "snow-white").
White tigers do not constitute a separate subspecies of their own
and can breed with orange ones, although all of the resulting
offspring will be heterozygous for the recessive white gene, and
their fur will be orange. The only exception would be if the orange
parent was itself already a heterozygous tiger, which would give
each cub a 50% chance of being either double-recessive white or
heterozygous orange.
Compared to orange tigers without the white gene, white tigers tend
to be larger both at birth and at full adult size. This may have
given them an advantage in the wild despite their unusual
coloration. Heterozygous orange tigers also tend to be larger than
other orange tigers. Kailash Sankhala, the director of the New Delhi
Zoo in the 1960s, suggested that "one of the functions of the white
gene may have been to keep a size gene in the population, in case
it's ever needed."
Dark-striped white individuals are well-documented in the Bengal
Tiger subspecies (Panthera tigris tigris or Panthera tigris
bengalensis), may also have occurred in captive Siberian Tigers
(Panthera tigris altaica), and may have been reported historically
in several other subspecies. White pelage is most closely associated
with the Bengal, or Indian subspecies. Currently, several hundred
white tigers are in captivity worldwide with about 100 of them in
India, and their numbers are on the increase. The modern population
includes both pure Bengals and hybrid Bengal–Siberians, but it is
unclear whether the recessive gene for white came only from Bengals
or from any of the Siberian ancestors as well.
The unusual coloration of white tigers has made them popular in zoos
and entertainment that showcases exotic animals. The magicians
Siegfried & Roy are famous for having bred and trained white tigers
for their performances, referring to them as "royal white tigers"
perhaps from the white tiger's association with the Maharaja of Rewa.
It is a myth that white tigers did not thrive in the wild, where
small groups had bred white for generations. India once planned to
reintroduce them to the wild. A.A. Dunbar Brander wrote in "Wild
Animals in Central India" (1923): "White tigers occasionally occur.
There is a regular breed of these animals in the neighborhood of
Amarkantak at the junction of the Rewa state and the Mandla and
Bilaspur districts. When I was last in Mandla in 1919, a white
tigress and two three parts grown white cubs existed. In 1915 a male
was trapped by the Rewa state and kept in confinement. An excellent
description of this animal by Mr. Scott of the Indian police has
been published in Vol. XXVII, No. 47, of the Bombay Natural History
Society's journal."
However, most white tigers are now bred in captivity, often by
inbreeding parents and cubs to ensure the presence of the recessive
gene. Such inbreeding often also leads to birth defects (Wikipedia).
Captive White Bengal Tiger Founders:
Mohan:
Mohan
is the founding father of the white tigers of Rewa. He was captured
as a cub in 1951 by Maharaja Shri Martand Singh of Rewa, whose
hunting party in Bandhavgarh found a tigress with four 9-month-old
cubs, one of which was white. All of them were shot except for the
white cub. The Maharaja of Rewa offered his guest, the Maharaja Ajit
Singh of Jodhpur, the honor of shooting the white cub, but he
declined. After shooting a white tiger in 1948 the Maharaja of Rewa
had resolved to capture one, as his father had done in 1915, at his
next opportunity. Water was used to lure the thirsty cub into a
cage; after he returned to a kill made by his mother, and once
captured he was housed in the unused palace at Govindgarh in the
erstwhile harem courtyard. The white cub mauled a man during the
capture process and was clubbed on the head and knocked unconscious.
He wasn't necessarily expected to wake up and this was his second
brush with death. The Maharaja named him Mohan, which roughly
translates as "Enchanter", one of the many forms of the Hindu deity
Krishna. The white tiger the previous Maharaja had kept in captivity
from 1915 to 1920 was also a male, unusually large like most white
tigers (Mohan was no exception in this regard), and was known to
have a white male sibling that continued to live in the wild. After
its death in 1920 it was mounted and presented to the Emperor King
George V, as a token of loyalty. This specimen is now in the British
Museum, although it was not the first white tiger to reach England:
in 1820, London's Exeter Change menagerie had a white tiger which
was examined by the famous French anatomist Georges Cuvier, who
described it in his "Animal Kingdom" as having faint stripes only
visible from certain angles of refraction. In 1960 there was a
mounted white tiger, with faint reddish brown stripes, in the throne
room of the Maharaja of Rewa.
In 1953, Mohan was bred to a normal-coloured wild tigress called
Begum ("royal consort"), which produced two male orange cubs on
September 7. In 1955 they had a litter of two males and two females
on April 10 (which included a male named Sampson and a female named
Radha). On July 10, 1956 they again had a litter of two males and
two females, which included a male named Sultan who went to
Ahmedabad Zoo, and a female named Vindhya who went to Delhi Zoo and
was bred to an unrelated male named Suraj. These early breeding
experiments failed to yield a single white cub.
Another maharaja, a cousin of the Maharaja of Rewa, recounted, "Rewa
was frustrated. I told him the answer - incest of course!" Mohan was
then bred to his daughter Radha (who carried the white gene
inherited from him) and they produced a number of white cubs. The
initial litter of four cubs - a male named Raja; three females named
Rani, Mohini, and Sukishi - were the first white tigers born in
captivity, on October 30, 1958. Raja and Rani went to the New Delhi
Zoo, and Mohini was bought by the German-American billionaire John
Kluge for $10,000, for the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, as
a gift to the children of America, in 1960. Sukeshi remained at
Govindgarh Palace, in the harem courtyard where she was born, as a
mate for Mohan.
The Government of India made a deal with the Maharaja, under the
terms of which Raja and Rani would go to the New Delhi Zoo for free.
In exchange the Maharaja's white tiger breeding would be subsidized
and he would receive a share of their cubs. He wanted Rs 100,000 for
them. Technically Sukeshi was also the property of the New Delhi
Zoo, and in a sense India had nationalized the captive white tigers
of Rewa. The Parliament of India used to hear reports on the
progress of the white tigers, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and U
Nu of Burma participated in public christening ceremonies for white
cubs at New Delhi Zoo. President Tito of Yugoslavia visited New
Delhi Zoo and asked for white tigers for Belgrade Zoo, but was
refused. A white tiger named Dalip from New Delhi Zoo represented
India in two international expositions in Budapest and Osaka. The
government of West Bengal bought two white males, named Niladari and
Himadri, from the Maharaja for the Alipore Zoological Gardens
(Calcutta Zoo), and an orange female named Malini, from the same
litter of three born in 1960, accompanied them there. The Alipore
Zoo in Kolkata, recovered the purchase price of the white tigers
within six months by charging extra to see them. Calcutta Zoo had a
fine specimen of a white tiger in 1920. Six zoos acquired white
tigers from the Maharaja of Rewa including the Bristol Zoo in
England (a brother and sister pair named Champak and Chameli on June
22, 1963) and the Crandon Park Zoo (which closed around 1983, and
moved out of Crandon Park to the site of the Miami MetroZoo) in
Miami acquired a white tigress in 1968. Bristol Zoo's pair, born in
1962, came from another litter of four, all white, but two (one
female and one male) didn't survive. By 1966 the Bombay Zoo had a
white tigress named Lakshmi, born in 1964, from the Maharaja. The
Calcutta Zoo sold a white tigress named Sefali to Gauhati Zoo and
sent a second white tiger there on loan. By 1976 the Lucknow Zoo
also had a white tiger which was a gift from New Delhi Zoo. A white
tigress named Nandni, who was born in New Delhi Zoo in 1971, went to
Hyderabad Zoo. Zoos with white tigers constituted a most exclusive
club and the white tigers themselves represented a single extended
family. The Maharaja was negotiating the sale of a white male, named
Virat, as late as 1976, when he died of enteritis. Virat was a son
of Mohan and Sukeshi and the maharaja put him on the market after
attempting to breed him to Sukeshi, which would have raised the
inbreeding coefficient.
India imposed an export ban on white tigers in 1960, in an effort to
preserve a monopoly, probably because Anglo-Indian naturalist Edward
Pritchard Gee recommended that Govindgarh Palace, and it's white
tiger inhabitants, be made a "national trust", which didn't happen.
After the export ban was imposed the Maharaja threatened to release
all of his white tigers into the Rewa forest, and so he was given
dispensation to sell two more pairs abroad, to offset his costs.
Mohini was only allowed to leave India because US President Dwight
D. Eisenhower intervened personally with Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru, to ask for the release of the United States government's
white tiger. A white sister of Mohini's was brought to New Delhi the
year before to show the President, who was no stranger to white
tigers. Circus owner Clyde Beatty also bought a white tiger from the
Maharaja in 1960, for $10,000 in a deal facilitated by the
Smithsonian National Zoological Park director T.H. Reed, which had
to be cancelled because of the export ban, which made Mohini even
more valuable. She was estimated to be worth $28,000. Dr. Reed had
travelled to India to escort Mohini to Washington. Years later the
Bristol Zoo needed a new breeding male and traded a white female to
New Delhi Zoo for a white tiger named Roop, who had been named by U
Nu, the Prime Minister of Burma. He was the son of Raja by his own
mother and half sister - Radha, born in New Delhi. Radha, and many
other tigers from Govindgarh including Sukeshi, were later
transferred to New Delhi. Begum went to live at Ahmedabad Zoo and
was bred to her son Sultan. They produced twelve cubs in four
litters between 1958 and 1961. Bristol Zoo later transferred two
male white tigers to Dudley Zoo. In 1951 the Maharaja placed ads
in "The New York Times" and "The Times" of London, and wrote to
Gerald Iles, the director of the Belle Vue Zoo in Manchester, and
probably others, offering to sell his captured white tiger cub. He
wanted the princely sum of $28,000 for Mohan. The Maharaja was
prevented by law from converting rupees into American dollars, and
wanted the money to buy a speed boat. Mohan was featured in the
National Geographic documentary "Great Zoos of the World" in 1970. A
photograph of his stuffed head, in a display case in the private
museum of the Maharaja of Rewa in Govindgarh Lake Palace, appears in
the National Geographic book "The Year of the Tiger."
Mohan died in 1970, aged almost 20, and was laid to rest with Hindu
rites as the palace staff observed official mourning. He was the
last recorded white tiger born in the wild. The last white tiger
seen in the wild was shot in 1958. The Maharaja of Rewa turned
Mohan's native forest into the Bandhavgarh National Park, because he
couldn't control the poaching. Today Bandhavgarh has the largest
tiger population of any national park in India. Visitors can stay at
the White Tiger Lodge, which is the local version of Tiger Tops in
Royal Chitwan in Nepal. Pushpraj Singh, the reigning Maharaja of
Rewa, is asking students to sign a petition to ask the President of
India to return at least two white tigers to Govindgarh Lake Palace,
as a tourist attraction.
Mohini:


Mohini, a daughter of Mohan, was officially presented to President
Eisenhower by John W. Kluge, in a ceremony on the White House lawn,
on December 5, 1960, and went to live at the Lion House, in the
National Zoo, in Rock Creek Park. T.H. Reed, the director of the
National Zoo, gave this description of Mohini: "Her stripes were
black, shading into brown, but her main coat was eggshell white
instead of the normal rufous orange. Exotic coloring and magnificent
physique made her a tiger without peer. For a two year old kitten
she had tremendous growth-almost 190 pounds, three feet tall at the
shoulders, and eight feet from nose to tail." White tigers are
larger and heavier than regular orange tigers. The average length of
a white tiger at birth is 53 cm, compared to 50 cm for a normal
orange cub. Shoulder height is 17 cm (normal 12 cm), weight 1.37 kg
(normal 1.25 kg). Dalip and Krishna, two white tigers at New Delhi
Zoo, weighed 139 kg and 120 kg respectively, at two years of age.
Ram and Jim, two normal colored tigers at the same zoo, weighed 106
kg and 119 kg, at the same age. Raja, the white tiger, had a
shoulder height of 100 cm, at ten years of age, while Suraj, an
orange tiger, had a shoulder height of only 90 cm, at 12 years of
age, according to New Delhi Zoo director K.S. Sankhala. Ratna and
Vindhya, orange tigresses "from the white race", who carried the
white gene as a recessive (both were fathered by Mohan), were higher
at the shoulder than average, measuring 87 and 88 cm, compared to a
normal orange tigress named Asharfi, who measured 82 cm at the
shoulder. President Eisenhower was also given a rare Pygmy
Hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis), a male named Totota, by
William Tubman, President of Liberia, in 1960, and a 14 month old
baby male African elephant (Loxodonta africana), named Zimbo in 1959
by the director of the Vincennes Zoo in Paris, on behalf of the
French community.
After arriving in the United States, Mohini spent 1 night in the
Bronx Zoo, and was then exhibited for three days in the Philadelphia
Zoo, before travelling on to Washington. Her name is the feminine of
Mohan, and translates as "Enchantress". She was her father's
namesake. She was a great attraction, and the zoo wanted to breed
more white tigers. At the time, no more white tigers were being
allowed out of India, so Mohini was mated to Sampson, her uncle and
half brother, who was sent from Ahmedabad Zoo in 1963. (It seems
probable that financial considerations may have also precluded
Washington from acquiring a second white tiger as a mate for Mohini.)
After Sampson's death in 1966, at age 11 of kidney failure, Mohini
was bred to her son Ramana, who was then the only male white gene
carrier available. This resulted in the birth of a white daughter
named Rewati on April 13, 1969 and a white son named Moni on Feb. 8,
1970. Moni died of a neurological disorder in 1971 at 16 months.
Moni was to have undertaken a fund raising tour for Project Tiger.
He was born in a litter of five, which included two white males and
three orange females. One was stillborn and the mother crushed the
others after three days. Rewati had an orange male littermate which
died after two days. Ramana was born on July 1, 1964 and had two
litter mates-a white male named Rajkumar, who was the first white
tiger born in a zoo, and an orange female named Ramani. Both died of
feline distemper despite having been vaccinated, at ten months age.
Rajkumar had a particularly nasty disposition. All of Mohini's cubs
were named by the Indian Ambassador.
The birth of Mohini's first litter was televised in a national
special. Mohini's orange daughter Kesari was born in 1966 with an
orange female who was stillborn. After Moni died in 1971 the
National Zoo tried to acquire an orange tiger named Ram from
Trivandrum Zoo, in southern India, as a mate for Mohini. Ram was her
first cousin, a grandson of Mohan, and there was a 50% chance that
he carried white genes. 25% of Ram's genes came from Mohan and 25%
from Begum. 25% of Mohini's genes were from Begum and 75% from
Mohan. Ram was a son of Vindhya and Suraj born on 23 IV 1965 at New
Delhi Zoo, the same Ram discussed earlier. Two sisters of Ram, born
on 22 Feb. 1967, went to the Romanshorn Zoo in Switzerland. In 1973
an Indochinese Tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti) named Poona, who was
born at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle in 1962, was sent to
Washington from the Brookfield Zoo and bred to Mohini and Kesari.
(Poona would have been regarded as a Bengal tiger for the first two
years of his life because the Indo-Chinese subspecies was not
recognized until 1968.) Mohini did not conceive. Kesari produced six
orange cubs, an extraordinary number, especially for a first litter,
but only one survived, a female named Marvina. Kesari handed Marvina
over to her keepers and kept the other five. Marvina was mistaken
for male, and named Marvin which was changed to Marvina when it was
discovered that he was a she. Washington Zoo keeper Art Cooper, who
hand reared Marvina, observed that white tigers were the most
obstinate cats in the zoo, and said that Marvina had a typical white
tiger personality. (Poona also fathered litters by two other
tigresses in Brookfield.) In 1974 Marvina, Ramana, and Kesari were
sent to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, and Rewati and
Mohini went to the Brookfield Zoo, to be boarded during renovations
in Washington, until 1976. On June 20, 1974 while at the Cincinnati
Zoo Ramana and Kesari produced a litter of three white and one
orange cub, including a white male named Ranjit, two white females
named Bharat and Priya, and an orange male named Peela. Devra
Kleiman of the National Zoo said that she was well aware of the
white gene and specifically told Cincinnati not to breed from any of
these tigers-Ramana, Kesari, or Marvina. Cincinnati countered that
although Ramana and Kesari had failed to breed in Washington they
did so almost as soon as they arrived in Cincinnati.
As a fringe benefit of inbreeding the four cubs were pure-Bengal
tigers, and they were the last registered Bengal tigers born in the
United States. Ranjit, Bharat, Priya, Peela, and Rewati had
inbreeding coefficients of 0.406. Ramana died in 1974 of a kidney
infection and became a father for the last time posthumously. A
white half sister of Mohini's bred from Mohan and his white daughter
Sukishi born on March 26, 1966, named Gomti and later renamed
Princess, lived in the Crandon Park Zoo in Miami for about a year
before she died of a viral infection. She arrived in Miami on
January 13, 1968. She was so inbred that both her mother and
grandmother were also her half sisters, and her father, Mohan, was
also her grandfather and great grandfather. She was half sister and
niece to Mohini. Mohan had fathered three generations of his family.
Miami mayor Chuck Hall met the 22-month-old 350 lbs. white tigress
at the airport and rode with her to the zoo. He wanted to call her
Maya, the name suggested by the Maharaja, which translates as
Princess. Ralph S. Scott, who paid $35,000 for her and gave her to
the Zoological Society of Florida, preferred the name Princess. It
was Ralph S. Scott, a famous big game hunter, who suggested to John
W. Kluge that he buy a white tiger for the children of America. He
had seen the white tigers in Govindgarh Palace while tiger hunting
in India. The government of India wanted Princess to be the last
white tiger exported from the country. A male white tiger, named
Ravi, acquired by Ralph S. Scott for the Crandon Park Zoo died at
Kanpur railway station en route from India in 1967. He was a son of
Raja and Rani, making him Princess's triple first cousin, born in
New Delhi, and sold by the Maharaja of Rewa. Mohini died in 1979.
The skins and skulls of Mohini and Moni are in the Smithsonian, but
are not on display.
An orange brother of Mohini's named Ramesh lived in the Ménagerie du
Jardin des Plantes (Paris Zoo), and was bred to an unrelated
tigress, but none of the offspring survived to reproduce. Ramesh was
born in Govindgarh Palace and had an orange female littermate, named
Ratna who went to New Delhi Zoo, had a white male littermate named
Ramu. They were the fourth and last litter of Mohan and Radha. Ratna
was paired with a wild caught male named Jim, at New Delhi Zoo, and
produced three litters. Each cub would have had a 50% chance of
inheriting the white gene from Ratna. Jim was captured in the Rewa
forest, so they thought there was a chance he carried white genes.
He had been somebody's pet, but after he ate a cat he was given to
New Delhi Zoo. Jim used to appear leaping into his pond, at New
Delhi Zoo, in the opening of one of Gerald Durrell's TV shows. E.P.
Gee mentioned, in his book "The Wildlife Of India", that Bristol Zoo
wanted to acquire one of the cubs of Mohan and Begum, as a mate for
one of its white tigers, Champak or Chameli, to lessen the degree of
inbreeding, as the US National Zoo had done through the acquisition
of Sampson. In 1987 Ranjit, Bharat, Priya, and Peela were sold to
the International Animal Exchange. Ranjit, Priya, and Peela went to
the IAE's facility in Grand Prairie, Texas. The phenomenon of
spontaneous ovulation in a tiger was first observed by Devra
Kleiman, in one of the white tigresses at the National Zoo, which
meant that it was possible to breed tigers by artificial
insemination.
Tony:

Tony, born in July of 1972 in the Circus Winter Quarters of the
Cole Bros. Circus (the Terrell Jacobs farm) in Peru, Indiana, was
the founder of many American white tiger lines, especially those
used in circuses. His grandfather was a registered Siberian tiger,
named Kubla, who was born at the Como Park, Zoo, and Conservatory in
Saint Paul, Minnesota. Kubla's parents were born in the wild and
believed to be brother and sister. He was bred to a Bengal tigress
named Susie, from a west coast zoo, at the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux
Falls in South Dakota. Susie was once owned by Clyde Beatty. Two of
their cubs (Rajah and Sheba II) were bred together in a brother–
sister mating, by Baron Julius Von Uhl, who lived in Peru, Indiana.
Julius Von Uhl was born in Budapest and came to America in 1956 from
Hungary after the revolution. One of the results of his tiger
breeding was Tony, who therefore carried mixed blood and was
responsible for introducing Siberian genes into previously pure
Bengal line of white tigers in North America. He may also be the
source of a gene for stripelessness. Tigers of mixed or unknown
ancestry are called generics, or even "trash tigers", by zoo people.
97% of tiger genomes are in private hands. Kubla was also bred to an
Amur tigress named Katrina, who was born at the Rotterdam Zoo, and
passed through the hands of two American zoos before joining Kubla
and Susie at the Great Plains Zoo (see International Tiger
Studbook). Kubla and Katrina have living pure-Amur descendants which
may include a line of white tigers that are claimed as pure-Amurs,
which originated out of Center Hill, Florida. These white tigers are
not registered Amur tigers. A tiger trainer named Alan Gold owned a
pair of Amur tigers which once produced a stillborn white cub.
In 1972 there were four white tigers in the United States: Mohini
and her daughter Rewati in Washington D.C., Tony, and his first
cousin named Bagheera, a female born on July 8, 1972 in a litter of
two white cubs, including a male which didn't survive, in the
Hawthorn Circus of John F. Cuneo Jr. Bagheera's mother, Sheba III,
was a sister of Tony's mother, Sheba II. Bagheera's father was
either her registered Amur uncle or preferred mate, named Ural, or
one of two of her brothers, named Prince and Saber, who were also
brothers to Tony's parents. Sheba III lived to be 26, an astonishing
age for a tiger. (This may be the tiger world record for longevity.
20 is extremely old for a tiger.)
Most of Sheba III's litters did not include white cubs, but at least
50% of her orange cubs would have been white gene carriers, since
they could have inherited the gene from their mother, and if both
parents were heterozygotes 66%, or two out of three, of their orange
cubs are likely to have been carriers. Prince was castrated before
Sheba III conceived another white cub, a male named Frosty, born on
Feb. 25, 1975, in a litter which included two orange females and one
orange male. Frosty severely mauled trainer Wade Burck. It seems odd
that a tiger which may have been fathering such valuable cubs
(Prince) would have been neutered. Saber was never observed trying
to mate, so perhaps Ural, also called Genghis, did sire one or more
of Sheba III's white cubs, which would have been three quarters
Siberian had this been the case. It is possible for tigers from the
same litter to have different fathers. It's also possible that any
or all three tigers-Ural, Prince, and Saber, carried the white gene.
Tony was purchased by John F. Cuneo Jr., owner of the Hawthorn
Circus Corp. of Grayslake, Illinois, in February 1975 for $20,000 in
Detroit. Tony's parents, Raja and Sheba, produced two more white
cubs at the Baltimore County Fair on June 27, 1976. The cubs were a
white male, named "Baltimore County Fair", a white female
named "Snowball", and an orange male. Snowball's name was later
changed to "Maharani", and all three cubs were sold to the Ringling
Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in Washington D.C.. Maharani died in
1984. Baron Julius Von Uhl had another three white cubs born between
June 18 and 19, 1977 at Kingdom's 3 (formerly Lion Country Safari)
at Stockbridge, Georgia off I-75 south of Atlanta. Two lived only a
short time. The other, named Scarlett O'Hara, died at the Atlanta
Zoo on Jan. 30, 1978 of cardiac arrest while undergoing surgery to
correct crossed eyes. She was still owned by Julius Von Uhl at the
time. Tony was sent on breeding loan to the Cincinnati Zoo in 1976,
to be bred to Rewati from the US National Zoo. However, Tony and
Rewati did not breed, so he was bred to Mohini's orange daughter
Kesari instead, resulting in a litter of four white and one orange
cub June 27, 1976, the same day that eight year old Sheba had her
white cubs in Baltimore, Maryland. It is an astounding coincidence
that both tigresses gave birth to white cubs on the exact same day.
On that one day America's white tiger population nearly doubled from
8 to 14. Kesari's 1976 litter represented a mixture of the two
unrelated strains.
All of the white cubs from Kesari's 1976 litter by Tony were cross-
eyed, as were Rewati and Bagheera. The Cincinnati Zoo retained a
brother and sister pair from the litter, named Bhim and Sumita, and
their orange sister Kamala. Two white males returned to the Hawthorn
Circus with Tony as John Cuneo's share from the breeding loan. John
Cuneo also asked the Bristol Zoo to trade some white tigers, to
diversify the gene pool, but the Bristol Zoo declined, perhaps not
wishing to exchange pure-Bengals for mongrels. Tony, Bagheera, and
Frosty lived for years with a troop of Hawthorn Circus tigers
stationed at Marineland and Game Farm, in Niagara Falls, Ontario,
Canada. Because of selective breeding only a few of the oldest white
tigers in the Hawthorn Circus today are cross eyed. Bhim and Sumita
became the world record parents of white cubs. In 1976 there were 39
white tigers -7 in New Delhi, 7 in Kolkata, one in Guwahati, one in
Lucknow, one in Hyderabad, 8 in Bristol, Cincinnati Zoo had 2,
Washington had 5, John Cuneo had 5, and Julius Von Uhl had 2. The
Maharaja of Rewa retired from the white tiger business in 1976. He
later abdicated in favor of his son so that he could run for the
family seat in parliament and became an MP. There is a white tiger
cub on the shield of the coat of arms of the Maharajas of Rewa.
Over 70 white tigers have been born at the Cincinnati Zoo, which is
no longer in the white tiger business. The Cincinnati Zoo sold white
tigers for $60,000 each. Siegfried & Roy bought a litter of three
white cubs from the Cincinnati Zoo, which were offspring of Bhim and
Sumita, for around $125,000. Prior to 1974 the Cincinnati Zoo wanted
to acquire a white tiger, but no zoo would sell at any price. By the
1980s the Cincinnati Zoo was the world's leading purveyor of white
tigers. After 1976 at least one more white tiger born at the
Cincinnati Zoo was cross eyed, a cub from Bhim and Sumita's first
litter. Crossed eyes may be reduced or eliminated through selective
breeding, as it has been in Siamese cats. Critics refer to white
tiger breeding as "proliferation", and the Cincinnati Zoo was
derided as a "white tiger mill".
The Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska bought Tony's parents and
orange sister Obie (born in 1975) in 1978, and bred more white
tigers. Kesari also went to live at Omaha Zoo, but didn't have any
more cubs. Some of Tony's white siblings born in Omaha proved to be
sterile. Obie was paired with Ranjit from the National Zoo, and
their cubs like those of Tony and Kesari, included non inbred white
tigers. A white tiger named Chester, who was a son of Ranjit and
Obie, born at the Omaha Zoo, fathered the first test tube tigers,
and then became the first white tiger in Australia when he was sent
to the Taronga Zoo in Sydney. His brother, Panghur Ban, was the
National Zoo's last white tiger. A white tiger named Rajiv, a son of
Bhim, became the first white tiger in Africa, when he was sent to
Pretoria Zoo in exchange for a king cheetah.
In 1983 Rewati was paired with Ika, from Kesari's 1976 litter, at
the Columbus Zoo. By this time he was a three legged amputee retired
from circus performance, put out to pasture to breed. Ika killed
Rewati in the act of mating. Ika was then mated with a white tigress
named Taj, who was a grand daughter of his brothers Ranjit and Bhim,
and fathered white cubs in Columbus. Ika and Taj had a cross eyed
daughter named Lilly, who appeared on Late Night with David
Letterman with Jack Hanna in 1986, as her mother Taj had done years
earlier. Ika was also bred to Taj's orange mother Dolly, a daughter
of Bhim and an unrelated orange tigress named Kimanthi, in Columbus.
Taj's father, Duke, was a son of Ranjit from an outcross to an
unrelated orange tigress. Isson, a white grandson of Kesari, was
also dispatched to Columbus on breeding loan from the Hawthorn
Circus, of Grayslake, Illinois, which eventually had 80 white
tigers. In 1984 five white tiger cubs were stolen from the Hawthorn
Circus in Portland, Oregon, and two died. The tigers were touring
with the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. The culprit was a
veterinarian who was sentenced to one year in prison and six months
in a halfway house.
In 1974 a white cub was born in the Racine Zoological Gardens in
Wisconsin, from a father-daughter mating. The father, named Bucky,
killed the white cub. The mother, named Bonnie, was later bred with
an orange littermate of Tony named "Chequila", who belonged to James
Witchey of Ravenna, Ohio, who bought him from Dick Hartman of South
Lebanon, Ohio, when he was four or five years of age. Chequila
proved to be a white gene carrier and fathered at least one white
cub in the Racine Zoo in 1980. It is not known whether Bucky, who
came from the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo in Indiana, and his daughter
Bonnie, were related to any of the established strains of white
tigers. By 1987 10% of North American zoo tigers were white.
In 2007 a white tiger was born at Safari Game Park in Bandon,
Oregon. The tiger, Sultan, is, as of October 2007, publicly
exhibited where children and adults can play with it and hold it and
the mother is also at the game park.
Orissa White Tigers:

Three white tigers were
also born in the Nandan Kanan Zoo (Nandankanan Zoo) in Bhubaneswar,
Orissa, India in 1980. Their parents were an orange father–daughter
pair called Deepak and Ganga, who were not related to Mohan or any
other captive white tiger – one of their wild-caught ancestors would
have carried the recessive white gene, and it showed up when Deepak
was mated to his daughter. Deepak's sister also turned out to be a
white gene carrier. These white tigers are therefore referred to as
the Orissa strain, as opposed to the Rewa strain, of white tigers
founded by Mohan.
When the surprise birth of three white cubs occurred there was a
white tigress already living at the zoo, named Diana, from New Delhi
Zoo. One of the three was later bred to her creating another blend
of two unrelated strains of white tigers. This lineage resulted in
several white tigers in Nandan Kanan Zoo. Today the Nandankanan Zoo
has the largest collection of white tigers in India. The Cincinnati
Zoo acquired two female white tigers from the Nandan Kanan Zoo, in
the hopes of establishing a line of pure-Bengal white tigers in
America, but they never got a male, and didn't receive authorization
from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA)'s Species Survival
Plan (SSP) to breed them. White tigers are freaks and phenotypic
aberrations. The AZA has recommended that white tigers be "bred to
extinction", which is to say, not bred at all and allowed to die
out, because they consume space and resources needed for endangered
orange tigers. It has been suggested that as few as 1 in 10,000
tigers in the wild was white. Although many AZA member zoos still
keep them, as an attraction to generate revenue, almost none breed
them. Sarah Christie, the coordinator of Conservation Programmes at
London Zoo, has said that she would not be averse to using a white
tiger in a zoo breeding program provided it was purebred. She said
that it's a naturally occurring gene and it shouldn't be selected
for or against. Zoo breeding programs for tigers may be of doubtful
value to conservation in any case. K.S. Sankhala once asked Sally
Walker of the Zoo Outreach Organization, of Tamil Nadu, India, "Why
do foreigners hate our white tigers so much?" The Zoo Outreach
Organization used to publish studbooks for white tigers, which were
compiled by A.K. Roychoudhury of the Bose Institute in Calcutta, and
subsidized by the Humane Society of India. The Columbus Zoo had also
hoped to breed pure-Bengal white tigers, but was unable to obtain a
white registered Bengal mate for Rewati from India.
There were also surprise births of white tigers in the Asian Circus,
in India, to parents not known to have been white gene carriers, or
heterozygotes, and not known to have any relationship to any other
white tiger strains. There was a white cub born at Mysore Zoo from
orange parents descended from Deepak's sister. On August 29, 1979 a
white tigress named Seema was dispatched to Kanpur Zoo to be bred to
Badal, a tiger who was a fourth generation descendant of Mohan and
Begum. The pair did not breed so it was decided to pair Seema with
one of two wild caught, notorious man eaters, either Sheru or Titu,
from the Jim Corbett National Park. Seema and Sheru produced a white
cub, and for a while it was thought there might be white genes in
Corbett's population of tigers, but the cub didn't stay white.
There have been other cases of white tiger, white lion, and white
panther cubs being born, and then changing to normal color. White
tigers which were a mixture of the Rewa and Orissa strains, born at
the Nandan Kanan Zoo, were none inbred. A white tiger from out of
the Orissa strain found its way to the Western Plains Zoo in
Australia. Australia's Dreamworld, on the Gold Coast, wanted to
breed this tiger to one of their white tigers from the United
States, acquired from Croatian-American tiger trainer Josip Marcan,
who was a trainer with the Hawthorn Circus and the Clyde Beatty Cole
Bros. Circus, and had also worked as a veterinarian at the Frankfurt
Zoo. The Western Plains Zoo rejected the idea.
Stripeless (Snow White) Tigers:

An additional genetic condition
can remove most of the striping of a white tiger, making the animal
almost pure white. One such specimen was exhibited at Exeter Change
in England in 1820 and described by Georges Cuvier as "A white
variety of Tiger is sometimes seen, with the stripes very opaque,
and not to be observed except in certain angles of light".
Naturalist Richard Lydekker said that, "a white tiger, in which the
fur was of a creamy tint, with the usual stripes faintly visible in
certain parts, was exhibited at the old menagerie at Exeter Change
about the year 1820." Hamilton Smith said, "A wholly white tiger,
with the stripe-pattern visible only under reflected light, like the
pattern of a white tabby cat, was exhibited in the Exeter Change
Menagerie in 1820.", and John George Wood stated that, "a creamy
white, with the ordinary tigerine stripes so faintly marked that
they were only visible in certain lights." Edwin Henry Landseer also
drew this tigress in 1824.
The modern strain of snow white tigers came from repeated brother–
sister matings of Bhim and Sumita at Cincinnati zoo. The gene
involved possibly came from the Siberian tiger, via their part-
Siberian ancestor Tony. Continued inbreeding appears to have caused
a recessive gene for stripelessness to show up. About one fourth of
Bhim and Sumita's offspring were stripeless. Their striped white
offspring, which have been sold to zoos around the world, may also
carry the stripeless gene.
Because Tony is present in many white tiger pedigrees, the gene may
also be present in other captive white tigers. As a result,
stripeless whites have occurred in zoos as far afield as the Czech
Republic, Spain and Mexico. Stage magicians Siegfried & Roy were the
first to attempt to breed selectively for stripelessness; they own
snow white Bengal tigers taken from Cincinnati Zoo (Tsumura, Mantra,
Mirage and Akbar-Kabul) and Guadalajara, Mexico (Vishnu and Jahan),
and a stripeless Siberian tiger called Apollo.
In 2004, a blue-eyed, stripeless white tiger was born at a wildlife
refuge in Alicante, Spain. Its parents are normal orange Bengals.
The cub was named Artico ("Arctic"). Stripeless white tigers were
thought to be sterile until Siegfried & Roy's stripeless white
tigress Sitarra, a daughter of Bhim and Sumita gave birth. Another
variation which came out of the white strains is unusually light
orange tigers called golden tabby tigers. These may be orange tigers
which carry the stripeless white gene as a recessive. Some white
tigers in India have been very dark nearly reverting to the orange
colour (Wikipedia).
Genetics & albinism:

Contrary to popular
belief, white tigers are not albinos; true albino tigers would have
no stripes. The stripeless white tigers known today only have very
pale stripes.
Part of the confusion is due to the misidentification of the so-
called chinchilla gene (for white) as an allele of the albino series
(publications prior to the 1980s refer to it as an albino gene). The
mutation is recessive to normal color, which means that two orange
tigers carrying the mutant gene may produce white offspring, and
white tigers bred together will produce only white cubs. The stripe
color varies due to the influence and interaction of other genes.
While the inhibitor ("chinchilla") gene affects the color of the
hair shaft, there is a separate "wide-band" gene affecting the
distance between the dark bands of colour on agouti hairs. An orange
tiger who inherits two copies of this wide-band gene becomes a
golden tabby; a white who inherits two copies becomes almost or
completely stripeless. Inbreeding allows the effect of recessive
genes to show up, hence the ground and stripe colour variations
among white tigers.
As early as 1907, naturalist Richard Lydeker doubted the existence
of albino tigers. However, we do have a report of true albinism: in
1922, two pink-eyed albino young were shot along with their mother
at Mica Camp, Tisri, in the Cooch Behar district, according to
Victor N. Narayan in a "Miscellaneous Note" in the Journal of the
Bombay Natural History Society. The albinos were described as sickly-
looking sub-adults, with extended necks and pink eyes.
Outside of India white tigers have been prone to crossed eyes, a
condition known as strabismus, like "Clarence the cross eyed lion",
due to incorrectly routed visual pathways in the brain in white
tigers. When stressed or confused all white tigers cross their eyes,
according to tiger trainer Andy Goldfarb. Strabismus is associated
with white tigers of mixed Bengal/Siberian ancestry. The only pure-
Bengal white tiger reported to be cross eyed was Mohini's daughter
Rewati. Strabismus is directly linked to the white gene and is not a
separate consequence of inbreeding. The orange littermates of white
tigers are not prone to strabismus. Siamese cats and albinos of
every species which has been studied all exhibits the same visual
pathway abnormality found in white tigers. Siamese cats are also
sometimes cross eyed, as are some albino ferrets. The visual pathway
abnormality was first documented in white tigers in the brain of
Moni, after he died, although his eyes were in normal alignment.
There is a disruption in the optic chiasm. The examination of Moni's
brain suggested the disruption may less severe in white tigers than
it is in Siamese cats. Because of the visual pathway abnormality, by
which some of the optic nerves are routed to the wrong side of the
brain, white tigers have a problem with spatial orientation, and
bump into things, until they learn to compensate. Some compensate by
crossing their eyes. When the neurons pass from the retina to the
brain and reach the optic chiasma some cross and some do not, so
that visual images are projected to the wrong hemisphere of the
brain. White tigers can't see as well as normal tigers and suffer
from photophobia like albinos. There is a 450 lbs. male cross-eyed
white tiger, named Namaste, at the Pana'ewa Rainforest Zoo in
Hawaii, which was donated to the zoo by Las Vegas magician Dirk
Arthur.
White tigers, Siamese cats, and Himalayan rabbits have enzymes in
their fur which react to temperature causing them to grow darker in
cold. They produce a mutated form of tyrosinase, an enzyme used in
the production of melanin, which only functions at certain
temperatures. This is why Siamese cats and Himalayan rabbits are
darker on their faces, ears, legs, and tails, where the cold
penetrates more easily. K.S. Sankhala, who was director of the New
Delhi Zoo in the 1960s, observed that white tigers were always
whiter in Rewa, even when they were born in New Delhi and returned
there. "In spite of living in a dusty courtyard they were always
snow white." A weakened immune system is directly linked to reduced
pigmentation in white tigers. White tigers react strangely to
anesthesia due to their inability to produce normal tyrosinase, a
trait shared with albinos, according to zoo veterinarian David
Taylor. He was treating a pair of white tigers from the Cincinnati
Zoo at Fritz Wurm's safari park in Stukenbrock, Germany, for
salmonella.
Mohini was checked for Chédiak-Higashi syndrome in 1960, but the
results were inconclusive. This condition is similar to albino
mutations and causes bluish lightening of the fur color, crossed
eyes, and prolonged bleeding after surgery or in the event of
injury; the blood is slow to coagulate, in domestic cats. There has
never been a case of a white tiger having Chédiak-Higashi syndrome.
There has been a single case of a white tiger having central retinal
degeneration, which could be related to reduce pigmentation in the
eye, reported from the Milwaukee County Zoo. The white tiger was a
male on loan from the Cincinnati Zoo.
Inbreeding depression:

Because of the extreme
rarity of the white tiger allele in the wild, the breeding pool was
limited to the small number of white tigers in captivity. According
to Kailash Sankhala the last white tiger ever seen in the wild was
shot in 1958. Inbreeding between these tigers often leads to
defects. Due to the high market value for white tigers, unscrupulous
breeders will still inbreed white tigers to ensure the offspring
also exhibit the recessive gene. Some animal rights activists have
called for a halt to the breeding of white tiger's altogether.
Rewati had a crooked spine, shortened limbs, and crossed eyes, and
her reproductive cycle was irregular, making her a poor candidate
for breeding. This may be why the National Zoo did not elect to
breed her with Poona, while he was on breeding loan to Washington in
1973. It is probably due to the rarity and demand for white tigers
that Rewati was later bred by Robert Baudy, in Center Hill, Florida,
to an unrelated orange Amur tiger, but did not conceive. A white
Amur tiger may have been born at Center Hill, and given rise to a
strain of white Amur tigers. Robert Baudy realized that his tigers
had white genes when a tiger he sold to Marwell Zoo in England
developed white spots, and bred them accordingly. He sold a white
tiger to Mike Tyson. Rewati also lived at the Bronx Zoo for several
years and they may have attempted to breed her. She appeared on the
covers of the April 1970 National Geographic and the June 22, 1973
issue of Science.
It has been possible to expand the white gene pool by outcrossing
white tigers with unrelated orange tigers and then using the cubs to
produce more white tigers. Ranjit, Bharat, Priya, and Bhim were all
outcrossed; in some instances to more than one tiger. Bharat was
bred to an unrelated orange tiger named Jack, from San Francisco
Zoo, and had an orange daughter named Kanchana. Bharat and Priya
were also bred with an unrelated orange tiger from Knoxville Zoo,
and Ranjit was bred to this tiger's sister, also from Knoxville Zoo.
Bhim fathered several litters by an unrelated orange tigress named
Kimanthi, at the Cincinnati Zoo. Ranjit had several mates at the
Omaha Zoo. The last descendants of Bristol Zoo's white tigers were a
group of orange tigers from outcrosses, which were bought by a
Pakistani senator and shipped to Pakistan. Rajiv, Pretoria Zoo's
white tiger, who was born in the Cincinnati Zoo and became the first
white tiger in Africa when he was traded for a king cheetah, was
also outcrossed and sired at least two litters of orange cubs at
Pretoria Zoo. Outcrossing isn't necessarily done with the intent of
producing more white cubs by resuming inbreeding further down the
line. The National Zoo no longer keeps any Bengal tigers and has
shifted its focus to endangered Sumatran tigers. The Cincinnati Zoo
has more recently bred endangered Indochinese Tigers. The drawbacks
of outcrossing are the loss of a generation and the production of
surplus cubs which may become "castoffs" or "throw-aways", and be
discarded after they have been used to propagate the next generation
of white tigers.
Today white tigers are so numerous that many are in sanctuaries for
unwanted tigers. The Lowery Park Zoo in Tampa, Florida has four
white tigers from Center Hill, which are "rescue tigers", and may
also be pure-Amur tigers. White tigers and white lions have been
used in canned hunts in South Africa, and there are white tigers
being bred on Asian tiger farms, to be killed for their body parts.
In China white tigers are made into wine. The PanYu XiangJiang
Safari Park in Gungzhou, China, started with four white tigers from
Sweden and Germany in 1996, the first in China. Today they have over
100 white tigers, with 10 to 20 births a year, and claim to have 50%
of the world's white tigers, but it's unclear, given the cost of
housing and feeding so many, why any one safari park or zoo would
need more than 1 or 2. A single white tigress imported from Sweden
has given birth to 49 of the white tigers. A tigress should not be
bred more than once every 2 to 3 years and this one has been
producing two litters a year. There is a myth, one of many which
have been propagated on the internet regarding white tigers, that
they have an 80% infant mortality. The infant mortality rate for
white tigers is no higher than it is for normal orange tigers bred
in captivity. In recent years a white tigress at the Buenos Aires
Zoo has produced several litters of white cubs, including some which
are stripeless, and a litter of 6 in 2004. A stripeless white
tigress gave birth to four stripeless white, and one orange cub, at
the zoo in Guadalajara, Mexico, which has an association with
Siegfried & Roy, in 2007. The fact that the litter included one
orange cub shows that the father, Nino, is orange. This was the
sixth litter born at the zoo. In the United States white tigers are
in the hands of many shady profit-motivated private owners and
breeders, and white tigers have been sold to drug lords and as pets.
In 1998 a Florida woman was killed by her pet white tiger and she
was its second victim. In 2005 the Border Patrol seized two white
tiger cubs which were in a pick up truck on the Texas-Mexican
border. Another white tiger cub was confiscated on the border
between Tijuana and San Diego in 1991 and donated to the San Diego
Zoo, a female named Blanca. Siegfried and Roy, and Tiger Island at
MarineWorld/AfricaUSA in Vallejo, California, each asked to have the
valuable cub which came from a private breeder in Arkansas. White
tigers have been relegated from royal palace to roadside zoo in 56
years. In Miami Zoo the white tiger lives in a facsimile of the
temple ruins of Angkor Wat in Kampuchea. A keeper was killed by a
white tiger, which was a cub of Bhim and Sumita born in Cincinnati,
in Miami Zoo in 1994. A white tiger also killed a keeper in a Texas
zoo.
Perhaps the mongrelization of white tigers has been a mixed
blessing, since although the introduction of Amur genes into the
white strain has further delegitimized white tigers for zoo
conservation purposes, it's possible that hybrid vigor has
counteracted inbreeding depression and created healthier bloodlines.
Outcrossing is a way of bringing fresh blood into the white strain.
The New Delhi Zoo loaned out white tigers to various zoos in India
for outcrossing, and the government had to impose a whip to force
zoos to return either the white tigers or their orange offspring.

Siegfried & Roy did at least one outcross. In the mid 1980s they
offered to collaborate with the Indian government in the creation of
a healthier strain of white tigers. The Indian government was
reportedly studying the offer, but may not have wished to have their
white tigers mongrelized like those in America. In India there was a
moratorium on breeding white tigers after cubs were born at New
Delhi Zoo with arched backs and clubbed feet necessitating
euthanasia. At one point the Cincinnati Zoo was the only zoo in the
world breeding them. The New Delhi Zoo decided to try again
reasoning that if Cleopatra could be born healthy and normal as the
product of three generations of brother to sister unions then so
might white tigers. (Cleopatra's parents were not brother and
sister.) Mice have been bred brother to sister for 150 generations
without ill effect, and are therefore 99.999% genetically identical.
Hybrid white tigers appear to be healthier than white subspecific
purebreds and an analogy can be made with purebred vs. mongrel dogs.
India is committed to keeping their white tigers purebred.
In the mid 1980s Siegfried & Roy owned 10% of the world's white
tigers. In the 1980s Siegfried & Roy were escorting two big, dark
striped, white tiger cubs to their new home at Phantasialand, in
Brühl, Germany, when the white tigers and their truck were briefly
stolen in New York City, when the driver stopped for coffee. The
white tigers made their debut in Germany at a ceremony attended by
the United States Ambassador. Siegfried & Roy have bred white tigers
in collaboration with the Nashville Zoo and they appeared on Larry
king with white tiger cubs born at the Nashville Zoo. Fritz Wurm's
safari park in Germany bought a pair of white tigers from the
Cincinnati Zoo, and Joan Collins attended the opening of the golden
domed white tiger pavilion, at the safari park in Stukenbrock,
Germany. Other genetic problems include shortened tendons of the
forelegs, club foot , kidney problems, arched or crooked backbone
and twisted neck. Reduced fertility and miscarriages, noted
by "tiger man" Kailash Sankhala, in pure-Bengal white tigers, were
attributed to inbreeding depression. There have also been congenital
cataracts reported from the Cincinnati Zoo and Parkinson's disease
in India. A condition known as "star-gazing", which is associated
with inbreeding in big cats, has also been reported in white tigers.
Some of the white tigers born to North American lines have "bulldog"
faces with a snub nose, jutting jaw, domed head and wide-set eyes
with an indentation between the eyes. However, some of these traits
have also been linked to poor diet. The white gene is recessive, and
therefore must be inherited from both parents, to produce a white
tiger. Inbreeding is a conscious strategy to promote homozygosity in
white tigers. There's really no such thing as a white gene. Rather
white tigers carry orange genes which are latent, switched off or
suppressed by an inhibitor, which is the chinchilla gene.
Historical records:

In Rewa
hunters' diaries recorded 9 white tigers in the fifty years prior to
1960. The Journal of The Bombay Natural History Society reported 17
white tigers shot between 1907 and 1933. E.P. Gee collected accounts
of 35 white tigers from the wild up to 1959, with still more
uncounted from Assam where he had his tea plantation, although Assam
with its humid jungles was considered a likelier haunt for black
tigers. Some white tigers in the wild had reddish stripes known
as "red tigers". The Boga-bagh, or "white tiger", Tea Estate in
upper Assam, was named that after two white tigers were shot there
in the early 1900s. While the modern population descends from Rewan
tigers, white tigers may have been recorded as far a field as China
and Korea, Nepal, Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Java.
Historically, white tigers may have been reported in northern China,
in the geographic range of the Siberian tiger, and perhaps in the
Indochinese, Sumatran and Javan subspecies, but not among South
China, Caspian (Panthera tigris virgata) or Bali Tigers. Korean and
Manchurian tigers were previously recognized as separate subspecies
(Panthera tigris coreensis and Panthera tigris longipilis or
amurensis), but they are now regarded part of the Amur tiger
subspecies (Siberian) named for the Amur river. There were also blue
tigers reported from southern China, referred to as "blue devils"
because they were notorious man-eaters. Arthur Locke writing in "The
Tigers of Trengganu" (1954) mentions white tigers, but it's unclear
whether he means specifically in Trengganu, in the Malay Peninsula,
or elsewhere in Asia, in which case there may be no record of white
tigers ever existing in the Malay Peninsula. The Malayan Tiger
(Panthera tigris malayensis or Panthera tigris jacksoni) was only
recognized as a subspecies separate from the Indochinese (Panthera
tigris corbetti) in 2004, and the Indochinese as a subspecies
separate from the Bengal in 1968. White tigers were reported from
Burma, now called Myanmar, but since the Irrawaddy River (Ayeyarwady
since 1998) is the theoretical dividing line between the range of
the Bengal and Indochinese tiger, it is uncertain whether there were
also white Indochinese tigers or white Malayan tigers.
In some regions, the animal forms part of local tradition. In China,
it was revered as the god of the West, Baihu. In South Korea, a
white tiger will sometimes be represented on the taegeuk emblem on
the flag – the symbolizing evil, opposite the green dragon for good.
In Indian superstition, the white tiger was the incarnation of a
Hindu deity, and anyone who killed it would die within a year.
Sumatran and Javan royalty claimed descent from white tigers, and
the animals were regarded as the reincarnations of royalty. In Java
the white tiger was associated with the vanished Hindu kingdoms and
with ghosts and spirits. It was also the icon guardian of the
seventeenth century court.
White tigers with dark stripes were recorded in the wild in India
during the Mughal Empire (1556–1605). A painting from 1590 of Akbar
while hunting near Gwalior depicts four tigers, two of which appear
white. As many as 17 instances of white tigers were recorded in
India between 1907 and 1933 in several separate locations: Orissa,
Bilaspur, Sohagpur and Rewa.
Between 1892 and 1922, white tigers were routinely shot in India in
places such as Orissa, Upper Assam, Bilaspur, Cooch Behar and Pune.
Pollock (1900) reported white tigers from Burma and the Jynteah
hills of Meghalaya. In the 1920s and 30s, fifteen white tigers were
killed in Bihar, and more were shot in other regions. On 22 January
1939, the Prime Minister of Nepal shot a white tiger at Barda camp
in Terai, Nepal. The last observed wild white tiger was shot in
1958, and the mutation is considered extinct in the wild. There have
been rumors of white tigers in the wild in India since then, but
none have been considered credible. It has been suggested from the
casual way that Jim Corbett makes reference to a white tigress,
which he filmed with two orange cubs, in his "Man-eaters of Kumoan"
(1946) that white tigers were nothing out of the ordinary to him.
Corbett's black and white film footage is probably the only film in
existence of a white tiger in the wild. It illustrates again that
white tigers survived and reproduced in the wild. The film was used
in a National Geographic docu-drama about Corbett's life. One theory
of white tigers holds that they were symptomatic of inbreeding as a
consequence of over hunting and habitat loss, as tiger populations
became isolated. In 1965 there was a chair upholstered with a white
tiger skin in the "India collection" of Marjorie Merriweather Post,
at her Hillwood estate in Washington D.C., which is now operated as
a museum. A color photograph of this item appeared in the Nov. 5,
1965 issue of Life magazine. In the October 1975 issue of National
Geographic there is a photograph of the minister of defense for the
United Arab Emirates with a stuffed white tiger in his office. The
actor Cesar Romero owned a white tiger skin.

Popular culture:

White tigers feature frequently in literature, video games,
television and comic books. Such examples include the Swedish rock
band Kent, who featured a white tiger on the cover of their best-
selling album "Vapen & ammunition" in 2002. This was a tribute to
the band's home town Eskilstuna as the local zoo in town had white
tigers from the Hawthorn Circus as its main attraction. Others
include the Beast Wars character Tigatron who transformed into a
white tiger, the White Tiger comic book hero and both. In the film
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
white tigers are seen fighting for the White Witch. Games include
Zoo Tycoon and the Warcraft universe. Both the Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers, and the Japanese Super Sentai series from which the Power
Rangers series are based have used White Tiger themed mecha. A
trained white tiger from the Bowmanville Zoo in Ontario, Canada, was
used in the Animorphs TV series. White Tigers are also seen in
Heroes of Might and Magic IV, where they are a lvl 2 unit for the
nature team. Even White Tiger and The Justice Friends were on
Dexter's Laboratory (Wikipedia).


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