White Bengal Tiger


White Bengal Tiger

The Bengal (white) tiger is a rare subspecies, included in the Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Bengal tiger lives in North and Central India, Nepal and Burma. He also lives in the Sundarbans (near the mouth of the Ganges) and Bangladesh. Bengal tigers of the usual red color sometimes give birth to cubs with white hair, which, however, retains dark stripes. In nature, they rarely survive - such animals cannot hunt successfully, as they are too noticeable. White tigers are specially bred for circuses and zoos.

Among animals with normal normal coloring, there are white individuals, which are called albinos, but this is a delusion, the white tiger is not an albino. These animals have so little pigment that their eyes look red because of the visible blood vessels. Everyone knows white mice, rats, and rabbits. It is known that in 1922 in India (according to other sources - in Burma) two pure white tigers with red eyes were shot dead. Similar cases have been recorded in South China. The rest of the white tigers known to man cannot be called albinos in the full sense of the word: most of them are blue-eyed and have brown stripes on their skin. It would be more accurate to talk about the light (white) color variation of their color. Their life expectancy is shorter compared to ordinary tigers and they have more fragile health. Under natural conditions, it is more difficult for a white tiger to survive, since it is given out by a light color during the hunt. Many people believe that these predators originated from Siberia, and the white color is a camouflage when living in snowy conditions. In fact, white tigers originated in India.

For millennia white tigers seemed to people beings shrouded in a halo of mystery. Sometimes they instilled fear, often became objects of religious worship. In Kyrgyzstan, they talked about the white tiger, which is able to solve all the difficult problems of people. During the ritual dance, Kyrgyz shamans, falling into a deep trance, turned to the tiger with a request for help. In medieval China, a white tiger was painted on the gates of Taoist temples to protect against evil spirits. The white tiger personified a certain guardian of the land of the dead, symbolized longevity. Stone statues in the form of a tiger were placed on Chinese graves: the demons must have been terrified of such a “guard”.

And the Indians firmly believed that if a person sees a white tiger, he will be granted enlightenment and complete happiness. It was from India, where the white tiger was perceived as a super-being, quite material, and by no means mythical, that the white tiger set off on a journey around the world.


All white tigers in captivity today are descended from one common ancestor, a male Bengal named Mohan.
In May 1951, the Maharajah of Reva was hunting tigers. The hunters stumbled upon a lair with four teenage tiger cubs, one of which attracted the ruler's attention with its unusual white coloration. Three red tiger cubs were killed, but the white cub was spared. In the palace of Maharaja Govindagari, the tiger, who was named Mohan, lived for about 12 years.

The ruler of Reva was proud that he had such a rare animal and he wanted to have more of them to the wonder of the whole world. When Mohan grew up, he was "married" to a female - an ordinary, red one. She periodically brought tiger cubs, but, alas, there were no whites among them! This continued until one of Mohan's daughters was brought together with her father, that is, they made the very inbreeding (closely related crossing), which, although it weakens the vitality of the descendants, fixes the necessary signs. The result was not long in coming: in November 1958, in a litter of 4 cubs, one was white.

After that, the number of such animals in the palace began to increase rapidly. Even the maharaja was unable to maintain a large group, and it was decided to sell the "surplus". Despite the fact that the Indian government declared rare animals a national treasure, several tigers were soon taken out of the country.

In 1960, one of Mohan's sons left for the US National Park in Washington. Some time later White tigers ended up in the UK, at the Bristol Zoo. Spectacular cats began their triumphal procession around the world.

How many of them are there in the world now? No one can say the exact figure, since these animals are kept not only in zoos and circuses, but also in private menageries. Despite the close relationship of all white tigers, no significant weakening of the viability of these animals has yet been observed. Most whites tigers lives in the homeland of their ancestor Mohan - in India. They can be seen in almost every Indian zoo. They are in America and Europe.

The frequency of appearance of white tigers is 1 individual per 10,000 with normal coloration. White tigers breed excellently in captivity.

Now there are about 130 white tigers in zoos around the world.

In 1987, an image of a tiger was discovered in the graves of the central Chinese province of Henan, its age is approximately 6000 years. The tiger talisman was made from shells and was found next to the body. This was the earliest appearance of a white tiger as a talisman.

Popularity white tigers gradually began to lead to the fact that there were too many of them, and now special authorities monitor their population.

Most people consider white tigers to be albinos. This is not true, because albinism is the absence of the melanin pigment that gives color to the skin, eyes and hair.

Melanin is responsible not only for dark color, it is also present in light-colored hair, blue and green eyes and skin color. Its congenital absence leads to a snow-white color of the skin and coat of the animal, while the eyes become blood-red. White tigers do not suffer from albinism, this is easily seen by paying attention to their stripes.

There is no evidence that albino tigers exist. There are no photographs of such a specimen. Periodically, tiger cubs are born in zoos with a very pale color, but even they have subtle, but real dark stripes.

The light color appears due to a recessive mutant gene that occurs in animals as a result of inbreeding.

For the first time, an almost white tiger was demonstrated in England in 1820. From those distant times, descriptions of an animal have come down, the stripes of which were visible only under certain lighting. The next time such an instance was born at the Cincinnati Zoo already in the twentieth century. At the moment, white tigers without noticeable stripes live in zoos in the Czech Republic, Spain and Mexico. These animals mostly do not leave offspring.

White tigers are considered a rarity, and breeders try to get an expensive tiger cub by any means. Often, in pursuit of profit, they exceed the allowable norms of intra-family crossing and receive noticeably deformed animals. So it happened with the pupil of the Arkansas nursery, the tiger Kenny.

Failed attempt to get a white tiger

For the first time, animal rights activists learned about the existence of Kenny the tiger in 2000, when he was 2 years old. His owner, in an attempt to get offspring of white cubs, carried out a series of inadmissible crosses, and the baby came out deformed.

His muzzle was flattened like a bulldog's, and his dentition was seriously skewed. These defects did not allow Kenny to be sold to the zoo, because few people would like to come and admire such an animal.

Kenny's owner turned to the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, an animal conservation organization specializing in large feline rescues. According to him, Kenny constantly lost orientation in space and hit the wall with his face.

Together with a white tiger, he gave them Willy, an ordinary orange Bengal, who suffered from strabismus. Presumably, Willy came from the same litter as Kenny.

Unnecessary tigers

Recently, the percentage of failures in breeding white tigers has increased dramatically. This is due to the fact that fresh blood does not flow into their genome. There are practically no such tigers in the wild, all white individuals are descendants of a single male.

Over time, gene mutations in the population of white tigers only increase, and breeders receive part of the litter of healthy, and part - deformed tiger cubs.

In this case, mutants can be either white or traditional orange. Zoos don't buy ugly animals. Representatives of the Big Cat Rescue Reserve (Florida, USA), who accept sick predators for keeping, claim that out of 30 tiger cubs born from white parents, only one will have a fairly good appearance.

What happens to the other 29, one can only guess, because private nurseries do not give an account of the real situation.

Kenny's story ended relatively well. He did not have mental disabilities, he felt great in the reserve and lived in it with his alleged brother Willy. Because of their physique unsuitable for hunting, these animals did not show aggression and liked to play with the workers of the rehabilitation center.

White tigers live less than their normal counterparts. An orange Bengal tiger without genetic abnormalities lives up to 20 years or more, provided it is well cared for. Kenny died at the age of 10.

His scary face has become a symbol of uncontrolled breeding and crossbreeding of animals in the exotic pet industry. Unfortunately, the desire of individuals and zoos to have an original animal continues to create a demand for less humane genetic experiments.

It is no secret that in our time, wildlife needs protection. But some white tigers, for example, live only in zoos. This predator is not classified as a separate subspecies. He is an individual of the Bengal tiger, which has a congenital mutation. This deviation results in a white coat with black or light brown stripes. In addition, such specimens have blue or green eyes, which is completely unusual for tigers with the usual fur color.

Habitat

The Bengal white tiger is an animal found in Central and Northern India, Burma, Bangladesh and Nepal. It should be noted that the "Bengali" most often have a red color. But if a white tiger is born in the wild, then it will be very difficult for him to survive due to the fact that with such a color he will not be able to hunt successfully, as he is too noticeable for his victims.

There is an opinion that these predators come from Siberia, and their color is camouflage in a snowy winter. But this is a delusion, because white tigers still appeared in India.

General information

The white tiger is an animal that is born with a frequency of one individual per 10 thousand with the usual fur color. Reports of these predators have been recorded for several decades, and they came mainly from Bengal, Assam, Bihar, but there were especially many of them from the territory of the former principality of Rewa.

The first documented sighting of a white tiger dates back to the middle of the 20th century. Then one of the hunters accidentally found the lair of the animal, where among the usual ones there was a white male tiger cub, and took it with him. This man tried to breed offspring of the same color from him, having happened to him with an ordinary female. The first attempts were unsuccessful, but after some time he still managed to get the second generation of white tigers.

More than half a century has passed since then. The population of these animals with an unusual color has increased significantly. Interestingly, all the white tigers currently kept in captivity in various zoos around the world are descendants of the same individual once found by a hunter in the jungle. It follows from this that all these representatives of the cat tribe are related to each other. There are now about 130 white tigers in captivity, of which about 100 are in India. Unfortunately, the last representative of these animals, who once lived in nature, was shot dead back in 1958.

genetic failures

As scientists have proven, the white tiger is an animal that is not an albino. This coat color can only be caused by the presence of recessive genes. This means that a real albino tiger cannot have black or brown stripes. If both parents are orange, but they carry certain genes, then the chance that they will have offspring with white fur is approximately 25%. Now let's take another case. For example, if the parents are of different colors, i.e. one of them is white and the other is orange, then the chance to get light offspring increases to 50%.

As mentioned above, among the white tigers come across and animals have plain fur without traditional stripes. In organisms, there are practically no such individuals of the coloring pigment, therefore their eyes are red due to the blood vessels visible on them.

White tiger: description of the animal

Such individuals are very often inferior in size to their red relatives, and a slowdown in growth has been observed in them since childhood. As mentioned earlier, these tigers have white striped fur and blue or sometimes they have various birth defects due to genetic failure. These include clubfoot and strabismus, kidney problems, and a crooked neck and spine. Nevertheless, it is not necessary to argue that because of this, the infant mortality of white tigers is too high.

These beautiful and unusual animals are considered extremely valuable specimens everywhere. And it's not just zoos. is also influenced by white tigers, for example, some of the popular music groups have dedicated their songs to them.

Amur tigers

I must say that Bengal individuals are not the only ones in which similar ones are found. Sometimes white ones with black stripes come across. But this happens much less frequently.

The current population of these beautiful animals includes both Bengal and Bengal-Amur hybrids. Therefore, now scientists are at a loss as to which of them originally owns this recessive white gene.

Despite the fact that from time to time there is information about white Amur tigers, their very existence in nature has not yet been documented. Many zoologists believe that this subspecies does not have such mutations. Many zoos keep Amur tigers with white fur, but they are not purebred, as they were actually obtained by crossing with Bengal tigers.

Attitude

For many centuries, the white tiger (photos of the animal are presented in this article) has been a creature shrouded in a halo of mystery. Sometimes these animals instilled fear or became objects of worship. In the Middle Ages in China, their images were applied to the gates of Taoist temples. It was believed that the white tiger is an animal capable of protecting people from various evil spirits. He personified the guardian of a certain country of the dead, and also symbolized longevity. The Chinese firmly believed that demons should be horrified by such a formidable guard, so they often decorated the graves of their relatives with sculptures in the form of this animal.

At the end of the 80s. of the last century, archaeologists, digging up graves in the province of Henan, discovered a drawing of a tiger, whose age is about 6 thousand years. It was a shell talisman lying near the body. To date, it is considered the oldest amulet depicting a white tiger.

In Kyrgyzstan, this animal was said to be able to solve almost any human problems and difficulties. To do this, the shamans, dancing a ritual dance and gradually falling into a trance, asked the tiger for help.

But in his homeland, in India, there is still one belief. It says that the person who is lucky enough to see a white tiger with his own eyes will be granted complete happiness and enlightenment. It was from this country, where he is perceived as a superbeing, but quite material, and not mythical, that he spread throughout the world.

The white tiger is a subspecies of the Bengal tiger with a special coat color. White tigers have white or cream fur with brownish-black stripes and beautiful blue eyes. These tigers are not classified as a separate subspecies - they are also considered Bengal tigers, but with a genetic mutation. These are quite large animals weighing up to 230 kg and with a body length of up to 3 meters.

Distribution and habitats

It is very difficult to see a white tiger in natural conditions; only one tiger with such a rare coloration comes across in ten thousand individuals. In nature, these tigers were found only in a few regions of India. However, they are kept in zoos quite often.

The first white tiger was caught by man in the middle of the last century. Subsequently, other individuals with a white color were obtained from him. Now many zoos in the world contain white tigers, all of them are descendants of the tiger that was caught in the last century.

Nutrition

The white tiger, like all other tigers, is a predator. He is able to hunt large prey - wild boars, deer and other animals. In zoos, tigers are fed fresh raw meat.

Lifestyle

Usually the white tiger is active in the morning and evening, and the rest of the time he prefers to sleep or lie down in some comfortable secluded place. Usually the tiger moves slowly on the ground and does not climb trees. Only small tiger cubs can play climbing trees. The white tiger can swim and loves to bathe in hot weather. He is not afraid of winter and easily tolerates low temperatures.

In captivity, tigers breed quite well. Many zoos manage to get healthy offspring of white tigers, but they do not always give birth to the same white tiger cubs. Even if both the female and the male are white, they can have red babies.

  • The contours of the stripes of each tiger are individual and never repeat, like human fingerprints.
  • The white tiger is not an albino, as it has dark stripes on its coat, and its eyes are not red.
  • Many white tigers suffer from kidney disease, poor eyesight, strabismus, clubfoot, and curvature of the spine. All these diseases appear in tigers due to genetic mutations that occur due to closely related crosses.
  • Tigers rarely roar, but if they give a voice, then it can be heard at a distance of three kilometers.
  • There are approximately 100 white tigers in Indian zoos.

White tiger brief information.

The Bengal (white) tiger is a rare subspecies, included in the Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Bengal tiger lives in North and Central India, Nepal and Burma. He also lives in the Sundarbans (near the mouth of the Ganges) and Bangladesh. Bengal tigers of the usual red color sometimes give birth to cubs with white hair, which, however, retains dark stripes. In nature, they rarely survive - such animals cannot hunt successfully, as they are too noticeable. White tigers are specially bred for circuses and zoos.

Among animals with normal normal coloration, there are white individuals, which are called albinos, however, this is a misconception, the white tiger is not an albino. These animals have so little pigment that their eyes look red because of the visible blood vessels. Everyone knows white mice, rats, and rabbits. It is known that in 1922 in India (according to other sources - in Burma) two pure white tigers with red eyes were shot dead. Similar cases have been recorded in South China. The rest of the white tigers known to man cannot be called albinos in the full sense of the word: most of them are blue-eyed and have brown stripes on their skin. It would be more accurate to talk about the light (white) color variation of their color. Their life expectancy is shorter compared to ordinary tigers and they have more fragile health. Under natural conditions, it is more difficult for a white tiger to survive, since it is given out by a light color during the hunt. Many people believe that these predators originated from Siberia, and the white color is a camouflage when living in snowy conditions. In fact, white tigers originated in India.

For millennia white tigers seemed to people beings shrouded in a halo of mystery. Sometimes they instilled fear, often became objects of religious worship. In Kyrgyzstan, they talked about the white tiger, which is able to solve all the difficult problems of people. During the ritual dance, Kyrgyz shamans, falling into a deep trance, turned to the tiger with a request for help. In medieval China, a white tiger was painted on the gates of Taoist temples to protect against evil spirits. The white tiger personified a certain guardian of the land of the dead, symbolized longevity. Stone statues in the form of a tiger were placed on Chinese graves: the demons must have been terrified of such a “guard”.

And the Indians firmly believed that if a person sees a white tiger, he will be granted enlightenment and complete happiness. It was from India, where the white tiger was perceived as a super-being, quite material, and by no means mythical, that the white tiger set off on a journey around the world.


All white tigers in captivity today are descended from one common ancestor, a male Bengal named Mohan.
In May 1951, the Maharajah of Reva was hunting tigers. The hunters stumbled upon a lair with four teenage tiger cubs, one of which attracted the ruler's attention with its unusual white coloration. Three red tiger cubs were killed, but the white cub was spared. In the palace of Maharaja Govindagari, the tiger, who was named Mohan, lived for about 12 years.

The ruler of Reva was proud that he had such a rare animal and he wanted to have more of them to the wonder of the whole world. When Mohan grew up, he was "married" to a female - an ordinary, red one. She periodically brought tiger cubs, but, alas, there were no whites among them! This continued until one of Mohan's daughters was brought together with her father, that is, they made the very inbreeding (closely related crossing), which, although it weakens the vitality of the descendants, fixes the necessary signs. The result was not long in coming: in November 1958, in a litter of 4 cubs, one was white.

After that, the number of such animals in the palace began to increase rapidly. Even the maharaja was unable to maintain a large group, and it was decided to sell the "surplus". Despite the fact that the Indian government declared rare animals a national treasure, several tigers were soon taken out of the country.

In 1960, one of Mohan's sons left for the US National Park in Washington. Some time later White tigers ended up in the UK, at the Bristol Zoo. Spectacular cats began their triumphal procession around the world.

How many of them are there in the world now? No one can say the exact figure, since these animals are kept not only in zoos and circuses, but also in private menageries. Despite the close relationship of all white tigers, no significant weakening of the viability of these animals has yet been observed. Most whites tigers lives in the homeland of their ancestor Mohan - in India. They can be seen in almost every Indian zoo. They are in America and Europe.

The frequency of appearance of white tigers is 1 individual per 10,000 with normal coloration. White tigers breed excellently in captivity.

Now there are about 130 white tigers in zoos around the world.

In 1987, an image of a tiger was discovered in the graves of the central Chinese province of Henan, its age is approximately 6000 years. The tiger talisman was made from shells and was found next to the body. This was the earliest appearance of a white tiger as a talisman.

Popularity white tigers gradually began to lead to the fact that there were too many of them, and now special authorities monitor their population.

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