BLUE TIGERS

Blue tigers have been recorded. They have slate grey or black stripes on a pale grey body. Normally blue dilution makes the colour lighter e.g. black becomes blue-grey; it doe not transform orange into grey. Blue tigers have been sporadically reported in the mountains of the Fujian province in China. It is described as maltese (bluish-grey or slate-blue) with white patches on the face and black stripes. Other normally tawny cats have blue or grey colour forms e.g. the bobcat so it would not be impossible to have blue/grey mutations in the tiger. A solid grey tiger could be caused by the non-agouti gene (causes melanism or solid black colour) and the colour dilution gene (converts colour to a washed out hue i.e. black to blue); this would result in grey tigers with darker grey stripes. A smokey blue or semi-melanistic tiger was born in the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, about 40 years ago.



1910, while in south-eastern China American Methodist missionary and renowned tiger hunter Harry R. Caldwell described a tiger coloured deep shades of blue and grey-blue. It was described as having a bluish-grey base colour which changed to deep blue on the undersides and stripes similar to those of a normal orange tiger. Caldwell, an experienced hunter and reliable eye-witness, wrote: I glanced at the object, which appeared to be a man dressed in the conventional light blue garment and crouching. I simply whispered to the cook 'Man,' and again turned my attention to watching the goat. Again the cook tugged my elbow, saying 'Tiger, surely a tiger,' and I once more looked. Now focussing on what I had altogether overlooked in my previous hurried glances, I saw the huge head of the tiger above the blue which had appeared to me to be the clothes of a man. What I had been looking at was the chest and belly of the beast."Caldwell attempted to shoot the tiger, but noticed two boys collecting plants nearby so he moved to a safer location from the shot. Unfortunately, the tiger disappeared. He wrote about the blue tiger in his book "Blue Tiger" in 1925 and noted that other sightings had been reported in the region.

There had been sporadic sightings of blue tigers in the Fujian Province of China since the early 1900s. Caldwell called the tiger "Bluebeard" and it became a personal mission to shoot the animal for its pelt. Although he never caught the cat, villagers confirmed the presence of "black devils" roaming the area. Caldwell sent out a telegram: "Come and help me kill the blue tiger. New York offers 500 gold for pelt." Later on, Caldwell, accompanied by his son John C Caldwell, carried out unsuccessful searches in search of the blue tigers. On several occasions John noted seeing maltese colored hairs along the mountain trails they were searching, but he did not catch sight of a live blue tiger. Another account of the same hunt is contained in "A Narrative Of Exploration, Adventure, And Sport In Little-Known China" written by his hunting companion, Roy Chapman Andrews (Associate Curator Of Mammals In The American Museum Of Natural History And Leader Of The Museum's Asiatic Zoölogical Expedition Of 1916-1917) and Yvette Borup Andrews (Photographer Of The Asiatic Zoölogical Expedition) published in 1918. Chapter 7 "Blue Tiger" contains the following account (abridged to remove travelogue):

'We had a most agreeable surprise when we sailed out of Foochow in a chartered house boat to hunt the "blue tiger" at Futsing. [...] In the evening we talked of the blue tiger for a long time before we spread our beds on the roof of the boat and went to sleep under the stars. [...] Mr. Caldwell's Chinese hunter, Da-Da, lived at Lung-tao [...] Tigers often come into this village. Only a few hundred yards from our camp site, in 1911, a tiger had rushed into the house of one of the peasants and attempted to steal a child that had fallen asleep at its play under the family table. All was quiet in the house when suddenly the animal dashed through the open door. The Chinese declare that the gods protected the infant, for the beast missed his prey and seizing the leg of the table against which the baby's head was resting, bolted through the door dragging the table into the courtyard.

This was the work of the famous "blue tiger" which we had come to hunt and which had on two occasions been seen by Mr. Caldwell. The first time he heard of this strange beast was in the spring of 1910. The animal was reported as having been seen at various places within an area of a few miles almost simultaneously and so mysterious were its movements that the Chinese declared it was a spirit of the devil. After several unsuccessful hunts Mr. Caldwell finally saw the tiger at close range but as he was armed with only a shotgun it would have been useless to shoot. His second view of the beast was a few weeks later and in the same place. I will give the story in his own words:

"I selected a spot upon a hill-top and cleared away the grass and ferns with a jack-knife for a place to tie the goat. I concealed myself in the bushes ten feet away to await the attack, but the unexpected happened and the tiger approached from the rear. When I first saw the beast he was moving stealthily along a little trail just across a shallow ravine. I supposed, of course, that he was trying to locate the goat which was bleating loudly, but to my horror I saw that he was creeping upon two boys who had entered the ravine to cut grass. The huge brute moved along lizard-fashion for a few yards and then cautiously lifted his head above the grass. He was within easy springing distance when I raised my rifle, but instantly I realized that if I wounded the animal the boys would certainly meet a horrible death. Tigers are usually afraid of the human voice so instead of firing I stepped from the bushes, yelling and waving my arms. The huge cat, crouched for a spring, drew back, wavered uncertainly for a moment, and then slowly slipped away into the grass. The boys were saved but I had lost the opportunity I had sought for over a year. However, I had again seen the animal about which so many strange tales had been told. The markings of the beast are strikingly beautiful. The ground color is of a delicate shade of maltese, changing into light gray-blue on the underparts. The stripes are well defined and like those of the ordinary yellow tiger."

Before I left New York Mr. Caldwell had written me repeatedly urging me to stop at Futsing on the way to Yün-nan to try with him for the blue tiger which was still in the neighborhood. I was decidedly skeptical as to its being a distinct species, but nevertheless it was a most interesting animal and would certainly be well worth getting. I believed then, and my opinion has since been strengthened, that it is a partially melanistic phase of the ordinary yellow tiger. Black leopards are common in India and the Malay Peninsula and as only a single individual of the blue tiger has been reported the evidence hardly warrants the assumption that it represents a distinct species.

We hunted the animal for five weeks. The brute ranged in the vicinity of two or three villages about seven miles apart, but was seen most frequently near Lung-tao. He was as elusive as a will o' the wisp, killing a dog or goat in one village and by the time we had hurried across the mountains appearing in another spot a few miles away, leaving a trail of terrified natives who flocked to our camp to recount his depredations. He was in truth the "Great Invisible" [referring to elusiveness of tigers] and it seemed impossible that we should not get him sooner or later, but we never did. Once we missed him by a hair's breadth through sheer bad luck, and it was only by exercising almost superhuman restraint that we prevented ourselves from doing bodily harm to the three Chinese who ruined our hunt. Every evening for a week we had faithfully taken a goat into the "Long Ravine," for the blue tiger had been seen several times near this lair. On the eighth afternoon we were in the "blind" at three o'clock as usual. We had tied a goat to a tree nearby and her two kids were but a few feet away.

The grass-filled lair lay shimmering in the breathless heat, silent save for the echoes of the bleating goats. Crouched behind the screen of branches, for three long hours we sat in the patchwork shade,--motionless, dripping with perspiration, hardly breathing,--and watched the shadows steal slowly down the narrow ravine. It was a wild place [...] the only entrance was by the tiger tunnels which drove their twisting way through the murderous growth far in toward its gloomy heart. [...] I knew it was six o'clock and in half an hour another day of disappointment would be ended. Suddenly at the left and just below us there came the faintest crunching sound as a loose stone shifted under a heavy weight; then a rustling in the grass. Instantly the captive goat gave a shrill bleat of terror and tugged frantically at the rope which held it to the tree.

At the first sound Harry had breathed in my ear "Get ready, he's coming." I was half kneeling with my heavy .405 Winchester pushed forward and the hammer up. The blood drummed in my ears and my neck muscles ached with the strain but I thanked Heaven that my hands were steady. Caldwell sat like a graven image, the stock of his little 22 caliber high power Savage nestling against his cheek. Our eyes met for an instant and I knew in that glance that the blue tiger would never make another charge, for if I missed him, Harry wouldn't. For ten minutes we waited and my heart lost a beat when twenty feet away the grass began to move again--but rapidly and up the ravine. I saw Harry watching the lair with a puzzled look which changed to one of disgust as a chorus of yells sounded across the ravine and three Chinese wood cutters appeared on the opposite slope. They were taking a short cut home, shouting to drive away the tigers--and they had succeeded only too well, for the blue tiger had slipped back to the heart of the lair from whence he had come. He had been nearly ours and again we had lost him! I felt so badly that I could not even swear and it wasn't the fact that Harry was a missionary which kept me from it, either. Caldwell exclaimed just once, for his disappointment was even more bitter than mine; he had been hunting this same tiger off and on for six years.

It was useless for us to wait longer that evening and we pushed our way through the sword grass to the entrance of the tunnel down which the tiger had come. There in the soft earth were the great footprints where he had crouched at the entrance to take a cautious survey before charging into the open. As we looked, Harry suddenly turned to me and said: "Roy, let's go into the lair. There is just one chance in a thousand that we may get a shot." Now I must admit that I was not very enthusiastic about that little excursion, but in we went, crawling on our hands and knees up the narrow passage. Every few feet we passed side branches from the main tunnel in any one of which the tiger might easily have been lying in wait and could have killed us as we passed. It was a foolhardy thing to do and I am free to admit that I was scared. It was not long before Harry twisted about and said: "Roy, I haven't lost any tigers in here; let's get out." And out we came faster than we went in.

This was only one of the times when the "Great Invisible" was almost in our hands. A few days later a Chinese found the blue tiger asleep under a rice bank early in the afternoon. Frightened almost to death he ran a mile and a half to our camp only to find that we had left half an hour before for another village where the brute had killed two wild cats early in the morning. Again, the tiger pushed open the door of a house at daybreak just as the members of the family were getting up, stole a dog from the "heaven's well," dragged it to a hillside and partly devoured it. We were in camp only a mile away and our Chinese hunters found the carcass on a narrow ledge in the sword grass high up on the mountain side. The spot was an impossible one to watch and we set a huge grizzly bear trap which had been carried with us from New York. It seemed out of the question for any animal to return to the carcass of the dog without getting caught and yet the tiger did it. With his hind quarters on the upper terrace he dropped down, stretched his long neck across the trap, seized the dog which had been wired to a tree and pulled it away. It was evident that he was quite unconscious of the trap for his fore feet had actually been placed upon one of the jaws only two inches from the pan which would have sprung it.

One afternoon we responded to a call from Bui-tao, a village seven miles beyond Lung-tao, where the blue tiger had been seen that day. The natives assured us that the animal continually crossed a hill, thickly clothed with pines and sword grass just above the village and even though it was late when we arrived Harry thought it wise to set the trap that night. It was pitch dark before we reached the ridge carrying the trap, two lanterns, an electric flash-lamp and a wretched little dog for bait. We had been engaged for about fifteen minutes making a pen for the dog, and Caldwell and I were on our knees over the trap when suddenly a low rumbling growl came from the grass not twenty feet away. We jumped to our feet just as it sounded again, this time ending in a snarl. The tiger had arrived a few moments too early and we were in the rather uncomfortable position of having to return to the village by way of a narrow trail through the jungle. With our rifles ready and the electric lamp cutting a brilliant path in the darkness we walked slowly toward the edge of the sword grass hoping to see the flash of the tiger's eyes, but the beast backed off beyond the range of the light into an impenetrable tangle where we could not follow. Apparently he was frightened by the lantern, for we did not hear him again.

After nearly a month of disappointments such as these Mr. Heller joined us at Bui-tao with Mr. Kellogg. Caldwell thought it advisable to shift camp to the Ling-suik monastery, about twelve miles away, where he had once spent a summer with his family and had killed several tigers. This was within the blue tiger's range and, moreover, had the advantage of offering a better general collecting ground than Bui-tao; thus with Heller to look after the small mammals we could begin to make our time count for something if we did not get the tiger. [...] Caldwell and I always spent the afternoon at the blue tiger's lair but the animal had suddenly shifted his operations back to Lung-tao and did not appear at Ling-suik while we were there.

 



Both Caldwell and I lost from fifteen to twenty pounds in weight during the time we hunted the blue tiger and each of us had serious trouble from abscesses. I have never worked in a more trying climate--even that of Borneo and the Dutch East Indies where I collected in 1909-10, was much less debilitating than Fukien in the summer. The average temperature was about 95 degrees in the shade, but the humidity was so high that one felt as though one were wrapped in a wet blanket and even during a six weeks' rainless period the air was saturated with moisture from the sea-winds.

[...] It was hard to leave Fukien without the blue tiger but we had hunted him unsuccessfully for five weeks and there was other and more important work awaiting us in Yün-nan. It required thirty porters to transport our baggage from the Ling-suik monastery to Daing-nei, twenty-one miles away, where two houseboats were to meet us, and by ten o'clock in the evening we were lying off Pagoda Anchorage awaiting the flood tide to take us to Foochow. We made our beds on the deck house and in the morning opened our eyes to find the boat tied to the wharf at the Custom House on the Bund, and ourselves in full view of all Foochow had it been awake at that hour.'

Caldwell wrote in his own book: "The markings of the animal were marvellously beautiful. The ground colour seemed to be a deep shade of maltese, changing into almost deep blue on the under parts. The stripes were well defined, and so far as I was able to make out similar to those of a tiger of the regular type."
  and his son wrote in "Our Friends The Tigers" (1954) of finding maltese (grey-blue) hairs of Futsing's blue tigers along the mountain trails when accompanying his father during his many searches for the blue tigers.

Richard Perry, in his book "The World Of The Tiger" reiterated that China's blue tigers were called blue devils because they were so often man eaters. More recently, there have been occasional reports of blue tigers in a mountainous region on the border between North and South Korea. Because North Korea does not welcome outsiders, it is not currently possible to investigate sightings. Slate-coloured tigers may represent a montane population of tigers where the colour has become fixed in a small, isolated and inbred population. Caldwell's hunting expedition indicates that blue tigers, if they are a separate race, prefer inaccessible regions where they are less likely to be encountered by humans. There are no blue tigers in captivity today - if there were, the recessive gene would make it easy to fix the trait. A smokey blue tiger was born in the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, about 40 years ago, but this is the only record of a captive blue tiger. There are no blue tiger pelts in museums or private collections and the images here are artist's impressions. Note: the term "Maltese" means "slate grey" and comes from the domestic cat world; it does not refer to Malta as the origin of the blue tigers.

Is it possible that blue tigers are due to a manifestation of the chinchilla gene known as "shaded silver"? The Amur tiger is found in north eastern China and northern North Korea and Siberia and has produced white tigers. The South China tiger whose range covers Fujian province (near Taiwan) has not produced white tigers though the historic ranges of the Amur and South China tigers may have overlapped resulting in inter-breeding. The South China tiger is supposedly the "stem species", from which all other tigers evolved so it is just about possible that the chinchilla mutation occurred in the South China tiger where it causes the bluish shaded colour morph and has been inherited by its descendent species where it has combined with other genes to produce white tigers.

RED TIGERS

There are records of stripeless golden Bengal tigers in India dating back to the early 1900s. In 1929, Pocock described a brown tiger with stripes only a little darker than the coat's background colour (probably a golden tiger). In 1936, a plain red tiger was reported. It had a uniform reddish-orange background colour, but entirely lacked stripes. The uniform colour was said to provide better camouflage in the area it inhabited - a region of open sandy tracts. No specimens were obtained and it may have been a single aberrant individual. Some Bengal tigers are very sparsely striped, with little striping on their bodies.

The genetic cause for "blue" fur is not a complete explanation. In both lynxes and other cats, it produces a grayish color, not really blue. The animal wouldn't so much have blue fur but gray fur which may look blue in certain lighting conditions. The main thing to question is what lighting conditions the sightings were made in.


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GREEN CATS?


There have, from time to time, been reports of green big cats. A green lion was reported by a prospector in the forests of western Uganda (reported 1962, but actual sighting is undated). Green fur colour in mammals is most often due to contaminants on the fur e.g. algae (where the cat has swum in algae rich water) or copper patina; or even a trick of the light - sunlight filtering through green leaves can give pale animals a green cast.



USEFUL GENETIC TERMS

Abundism
Markings are more prolific than usual

Albinism
Lacking melanin, also known as amelanistic. "True" albinos entirely lack markings and have pale blue ("partial albino") or pink eyes ("true albino"), but there are many degrees of partial albino. Some forms of albino are temperature dependent e.g. the Siamese cat has a form of albinism where pigmentation develops on cooler areas of the body (the head, tail and legs) but is inhibited on the warmer parts of the body. Albinism can also occur in patches.

Anerythristic albinism
Lacking the red colour. The actual colour and pattern of the animal depends on what other colours are in the pattern. One effect might be a bluish-grey animal.

Axanthic albinism
Lacking the yellow colour. The actual colour and pattern of the animal depends on what other colours are in the pattern.

Chinchilla
The hair shaft lacks normal bands of pigment and may be pigmented only at the top. Known also as the "inhibitor" gene because it inhibits production of pigment. There is also believed to be a "wide band" gene because the hair shaft has a wide band of white.

Dilution
The colour is washed out e.g. black becomes blue (grey), red becomes cream, blue becomes lilac.

Golden
The hair-shaft has a wide band of gold. It is a combination of chinchilla or wide band and normal colouring.

Erythristic
Black pigment is converted to red.

Flavistic
Golden mutation. The overall effect is that of an pale animal photographed in sepia; all colours seem converted to shades of brown or golden-brown.

Hypermelanistic
Having excessive black and/or brown pigment (usually just referred to as melanistic)..

Hypomelanistic
Having less black and/or brown colour than normal. These animals still have some pigment and may simply look "faded".

Leucistic
Similar to albino; white, but having dark eyes, some pigmented skin and often having "ghost markings" visible in certain light.

Maltesing
Another term for dilution of black into blue.

Melanism
Abnormal amounts of black pigment.

Mosaicism
Abnormal black patches of skin cells due to cell mutations in the embryo.

Nigrism
Black markings merge into black areas.

Partial Albinism
The correct definition is an albino with some residual pigmentation e.g. dark eyes, cream fur or ghost markings. However "partial albino" is also often used to describe animals with albino patches (piebald).

Piebald
Having white patches. Note: piebald is a normal colouration in some animals, this note only applies to animals which do not normally have black or white patches. In normally dark-coloured animals white patches may be due to albinism affecting certain areas of skin; in normally light-coloured animals, black/dark brown patches may be due to melanism. The patches are due to localised mutations in skin cells during embryo development. If the mutation occurs early in development, the patches are larger. If it occurs later, the patches are smaller.

Pseudomelanism
Combination of abundism and nigrism i.e. prolific markings coalesce to hid the background colour.

Rufism
Affects the depth of the red pigment turning it from yellow-orange into deep orange-red.

True Albino
Totally lacking in pigment - white fur and skin, no markings, blue or pink eyes.

Tyrosinase-negative Albino
An albino whose cells lack tyrosinase (an enzyme which synthesises melanin), usually producing a pale yellowish or cream animal with pink-eyes.

Tyrosinase Positive Albino
An albino not able to synthesise melanin, but able to synthesise tyrosinase, often resulting in a fawn or lavender (platinum) colour. Tyrosinase positive albinism ("partial albinism") is the most common form of albinism.

Xanthic
Having more yellow colour than normal

GREEN CATS?


There have, from time to time, been reports of green big cats. A green lion was reported by a prospector in the forests of western Uganda (reported 1962, but actual sighting is undated). Green fur colour in mammals is most often due to contaminants on the fur e.g. algae (where the cat has swum in algae rich water) or copper patina; or even a trick of the light - sunlight filtering through green leaves can give pale animals a green cast.

There are loads of hybrids wandering around nowdays, usually because of mans interactions with nature. There are zebra/horse crosses, Lynx/Bobcats.. Loads!
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go i-gor!
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WHITE TIGERS

It is commonly believed that white tigers only occur among Bengal tigers. The mutation has also occurred in pure-bred Amur tigers. White tigers have been reported in northern China, in the geographic range of the Amur tiger (previously called the Manchurian/North China tiger and the Siberian tiger) and also appear to have occurred in the Indo-Chinese, Sumatran, Javan subspecies. White tigers have not been reported amongst the South China, Caspian or Bali tigers. It is possible that the blue tigers reported in China and on the North/South Korean border region are due to a manifestation of the same mutation. White tigers also form part of tradition in some regions. In China the white tiger was revered as the god of the West, and was associated with metal and the practise of placing a coin in the mouth of the deceased. The white tiger is represented on the South Korean flag in the Yin and Yang emblem, the white tiger as evil opposite the green dragon for good. In India there was a superstition that the slayer of a white tiger would die within a year and the white tiger was regarded as the incarnation of a Hindu god. In Sumatra and Java royalty claimed descent from white tigers, and white tigers were regarded as the reincarnations of royalty. White tigers are also known as Ice Tigers, not because of their habitat, but because of their "glacial" appearance.

White tigers, whether of Bengal, Amur or mixed ancestry, should really be considered a man-made "breed". White tigers with dark brown or reddish-black stripes were recorded in the wild during the Mughal Period from 1556 - 1605 AD. There have been as many as 17 instances of white tigers recorded in India between 1907 and 1933; these have occurred in several separate locations: Orissa, Bilaspur, Sohagpur and Rewa. Suggestions that these are what remains of a race of white tigers in a snowy wilderness are fanciful, especially as the mutation is seen in a tropical sub-species of tiger and tigers are found in wooded habitats, not the open tundra! It is debatable whether white tigers have a place in the wild. It should be remembered that white tigers are mutant forms of the Bengal tiger and are not a sub-species in their own right. It is humans who have chosen to selectively breed them to create true-breeding white tigers. There are currently around 500 white tigers in the world (John Cuneo's Hawthorn Circus had more than 80 white tigers) and The Zoo Outreach Organization in Tamil Nadu, India maintains a white tiger studbook compiled by AK Roychoudhury of the Bose Institute in Calcutta.

The last recorded white tiger in the wild was shot at Bihar in 1958. Although white tigers are no longer observed in the wild, the mutant gene may still be in the gene pool. The White Tiger Tea Plantation in India was so named because two white tigers were shot there. White tigers have been recorded outside of the Indian state of Rewa and as far afield as China and Korea and from Nepal, Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and Java.



One of the earliest records of white tigers is of one displayed in London in 1820 and described by Rev J G Woods as "a creamy white, with the ordinary tigerine stripes so faintly marked that they were only visible in certain lights". White tigers were routinely shot between 1892 and 1922 in places such as Orissa, Upper Assam, Bilaspur, Cooch Behar and Poona. Between the 1920s and 1930s fifteen white tigers were killed in the Bihar region. In 1922, two pure white young adult tigers with pink eyes were shot in Cooch Behar (north-east India). In 1951, a normal coloured tigress and cubs were shot, but her white cub was captured alive some days later. This cub "Mohan" became the founding father of the white tiger breed. The last observed wild white tiger was shot in 1958 and the mutation is considered extinct in the wild. The slaughter of hundreds of orange tigers evidently killed the carriers of the mutant gene.

White Bengal Tigers (Rewa)

The Maharajah Gulab Singh of Rewa captured a young male white tiger, approximately 2 years old, in December 1915 and it lived in captivity at his summer palace in Govindgarh until 1920 after which it was stuffed and presented to George V as a token of loyalty (it may still be in the British Museum today). There was also a fine specimen of a white tigress in the Calcutta Zoo in 1920. The Maharajah was succeeded by Maharajah Shri Martand Singh who shot a white tiger in 1948 and then resolved to try to capture a white tiger. In May 1951, the Maharajah and his hunting party came upon a tigress with four cubs, including one white one, while hunting in Bandhavgarh, a jungle region of Central India. The hunting party shot all but the white cub which guests declined to shoot. The white cub escaped back into the jungle, but hunger drove it to a kill previously made by its mother. A cage was placed at the entrance of the crevice where the cub was hiding; when thirst overtook the cub it entered the cage and was trapped. It was transported to the Maharajah's palace and placed in a large, open courtyard. Three days later, the cub escaped and had to be recaptured and returned to the now-repaired courtyard. This tiger was the famous Mohan. He was unsuccessfully offered for sale for $10,000 in The New York Times.

Mohan was later bred to a wild-caught orange tigress named Begum, but the pair produced only orange cubs (the Maharajah didn't know about recessive genes when he kept breeding Mohan to Begum.). This means Begum did not carry the white gene. The Maharajah of Baroda (who had declined to shoot Mohan in 1950) said "Rewa was frustrated. I told him the answer, incest of course". Mohan was then bred to Radha, one of his daughters, resulting in four white cubs: Raja, Rani, Sukeshi and Mohini. Radha continued to be mated to Mohan and ultimately produced 13 white cubs and 9 orange; she died in 1974. Raja was also mated to his mother Radha and the pair produced a male white cub named Roop who was traded to Bristol Zoo for a white female. Mohan died in 1969, aged almost 20. He was the last recorded wild-caught white tiger and the first Bengal tiger to be registered in the International Tiger Studbook at Liepzig Zoo.

Bristol Zoo also had an orange daughter of Mohan, which was never bred. The Maharaja of Rewa also gave an orange son of Mohan to the President of India, who made it a state gift to France, landing it in Paris Zoo, where it fathered several litters. It has no living descendants today, and Paris Zoo did not know it carried the white mutation.

A pair of white tigers from the same litter as Mohini, named Raja and Rani, were given by the Maharajah to the Indian government for the New Delhi Zoo, in exchange for subsidization of his breeding program and a share of their offspring. Raja and Rani were bred together, producing 20 cubs, all white, though Rani was not a good mother. Mohini later went to America to found a line of white tigers there. Sukeshi was retained for breeding with Mohan. When Mohan was retired from breeding, Sukeshi was to be mated to her own son, but he showed no interest in mating with her and after 6 unsuccessful years Sukeshi went to New Delhi Zoo where she remained until her death in 1975.

After the Maharajah successfully bred white tigers, which he housed in Govindgarh Palace, the government of India imposed a ban on the export of white tigers, declaring them a living treasure. When Eisenhower visited New Delhi in 1959, a white sister of Mohini was brought from Rewa to show him. In 1960, the German born billionaire John W. Kluge bought a white tigress from the Maharajah for $10,000 as a gift for the US National Zoo in Washington DC, but the government of India would not let it out of India. Negotiations included President Eisenhower appealing to Prime Minister Nehru to release Mohini from India. Finally the tigress was released and was officially presented to President Eisenhower on the White House lawn. Tiger trainer Clyde Beatty also bought a white tiger from the Maharajah for $10,000, but was not allowed to take it out of India, and his money was refunded. Mohini was a great attraction and the zoo wanted to breed more white tigers. Because no more white tigers were being allowed out of India, they mated her to Sampson (who had come from Hyderabad Zoo, India), her orange uncle and also her half-brother who carried the white gene. One of their offspring, Ramana, was mated back to Mohini resulting in a white female, Rewati. Unfortunately, inbreeding depression was starting to show up. President Tito of Yugoslavia also requested white tigers for Belgrade Zoo, but was refused.

In 1964 Raja and Rani produced two white cubs, a male and a female. Rani mauled both, killing the female. The surviving male, Tippu, lost his tail and was hand-reared with difficulty. In 1965, Rani had two white cubs, but both died due to neglect. Rani had a second litter in 1965, this time producing three white cubs. She reared them for one month, but then lost interest. The female died aged 17 months and the male died in 1967 during shipping to the USA (at the railway station as noted below).

In spite of the agreement with New Delhi Zoo, because of the expense of keeping the white tigers the Maharajah threatened to release them all into the forest. As a result he received permission to sell two more pairs to foreign zoos. A brother and sister pair, named Champak and Chameli, went to Bristol Zoo in 1963 at a cost of d $200,000. Bristol Zoo's last white male, Akbar, was on loan to Dudley Zoo for a while, where he was paired with an orange tigress. The last descendants of Champak and Chameli at Bristol Zoo were a group of orange tigers which were sold to a senator in Pakistan; he had no idea they carried white genes until he was contacted by a researcher in Australia.

Another pair was sold to the Crandon Park Zoo in 1967, but the male died at a railway station in India. Ralph Scott had first seen the white tigers of Rewa while tiger hunting in India. He bought the two white tigers for Crandon Park Zoo for $35,000 each. The white female, known as Gomti in India, but Princess in America, only lived about a year in Miami and apparently succumbed to an infection. In August 1979, a white tiger called Seema was sent to Kanpur Zoo as a mate for orange tiger Badal (a 4th generation descendent of the Mohan-Begum line). The pair did not mate and Seema was later bred to Sheru, a wild-caught orange tiger. Seema and Sheru produced 3 cubs: Sajeev, Uttam and a white called Johar. This suggested that Sheru carried the recessive gene for white and that it might still be present in the wild. However the white cub later developed normal orange colouration, suggesting that the wild-caught tiger didn't carry the white gene after all.

White Bengal Tigers (Orissa)

A third strain of white tigers appeared in the Nandankanan Zoo in Orissa, India. Calcutta Zoo bred its white tigers from 2 white males and an orange female bought from the Maharajah and also had white tigers born into their collection from another branch of the Nandankanan Zoo Orissa strain. In July 2000, Nandankanan Zoological Park, India 13 Bengal tigers, including 9 white tigers, died apparently as a result of a reaction to medication for sleeping sickness. 17 tigers had been medicated. White tigers appear to be more susceptible to adverse reactions as a result of inbreeding. Prior to the incident, the zoo had 56 Bengal tigers including 32 white tigers.

White Amur Tigers

A second strain of white tigers originated at the Como Zoo in Minnesota where two Amur (Siberian) tigers who were brothers, both born at Como Zoo, evidently carried the white gene. These had had no Bengal ancestry - their parents were captured in the wild and both were registered Amur tigers (some of their purebred Amur descendants are white). One of those white Amur tigers was bred to a Bengal tigress before being sold to a Dutch zoo (this was the grandfather of Tony, a founder of many American white tiger lineages) and his living descendants are registered as pure Amur tigers demonstrating that he was a pure Amur tiger.

Alan Shoemaker (Curator of Mammals at the Riverbanks Zoo) believes there are pure Amur white tigers in captivity today. Robert Baudy, claims that his white tigers are of pure Amur stock. Baudy apparently realised that his Amur tigers had white genes after one sold to Marwell Zoo developed white spots (confirmed by Marwell Zoo). Baudy sold a pair of white, supposedly pure Amur, tigers, Raisa and Gorby, to the Beauval Zoo in France and some of Raisa and Gorby's offspring went to a Dutch zoo and some to Colchester Zoo, England. The rather shaggy white tigers at Tigerhomes (USA) are also described as Siberian (Amur) white tigers. I also have personal correspondence relating to a pair of privately owned Amur tigers that produced a stillborn white cub.

White Tigers of Unknown Lineages

In 1980 a white tiger cub was born at the Racine Zoo in Wisconsin from an accidental father/daughter mating, though the cub was apparently killed by the father. The mother was later used to breed more white cubs. They were not known to have carried the white gene and it is uncertain how they relate to the other known white lineages. The same is true of the white tigers in the Asian Circus in India. Everland Zoo, Seoul, South Korea, bought white tigers from a private breeder, Betty Young of Arkansas; these are descended from the Racine Zoo tigers.

Stripeless White Tigers

A pure white tiger was described in the 1800s and showing ghost stripes: "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 the early part of the nineteenth century and described by Hamilton Smith". Pure white tigers, possibly true albinos, have been documented historically. The 18th century French naturalist Baron Georges Cuvier described a white tigress whose stripes were visible only when viewed from certain angles. Another was the 1820 specimen described by Rev Woods. While those might have been very pale chinchilla mutants or blue-eyed albinos, the pink-eyed white tigers shot in Cooch Behar in 1922 were evidently pure albinos. A normal-coloured tigress and her four cubs were shot; two of the cubs were tawny tigers, but the other two were white with pink eyes (true albinos) and relatively long necks (probably due to inbreeding). Another was photographed in Similipal Reserve, Orissa, India in 1989. True pink-eyed albino tigers are disadvantaged by their conspicuousness, photo-sensitive eyes and lack of skin pigment (they risk skin cancer). There are currently no true albino tigers in captivity.



Pure white tigers are also called snow tigers, ghost tigers (because their stripes show up in certain light) or recessive stripe tigers. In 2004 a blue-eyed, stripeless white tiger was born at a wildlife refuge in Alicante, Spain. Its parents are normal orange Bengal tigers and the cub, named Artico (Spanish for Arctic), is not an albino, but a white tiger similar to that described by Cuvier and Hamilton Smith. Although white tigers are relatively common in zoos, there are only about 20 stripeless white tigers around the world. Artico was not announced to the world until August 2004, when he was 3 months old. At birth he was so weak he seemed unlikely to survive and he still needs special care as he cannot digest food properly.

Siegfried And Roy were the only people to breed selectively for stripelessness.

That's photoshoped. We don't currently have any records of pure white specimens.
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