"The Chilean National Zoo has announced the birth of a rare litter of five white tigers.Zoo director Mauricio Fabry said Thursday that the zoo will build a special habitat to accommodate the tigers born on Dec. 28.He said that the new enclosure will include a large expanse of grass and waterfalls and will be without bars.
On Wednesday, zoo officials implanted subcutaneous chips in the cubs to identify them.The tigers' father is Pampa, who arrived from Argentina in 2007. The mother is Luna, who arrived at the zoo from Mexico in 2004.The couple produced a litter of three white tigers in December 2007, but the zoo hasn't seen a litter of five in 82 years.The tigers' white fur is the result of a rare gene mutation.Fabry says there are only 200 such tigers on the planet."
source:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/07/ap/latinamerica/main6068251.shtml
Here are some facts about White tigers which I found on the internet:
"A white tiger ( scientific name: Panthera tigris ) is a tiger with a recessive gene that creates the pale coloration. White tigers are also referred to using the name "Bengal" tiger. Another genetic characteristic makes the stripes of the tiger very pale; white tigers of this type are called snow-white or "pure white". This occurs when a tiger inherits two copies of the recessive gene for the paler coloration, which is rare.White tigers are not albinos and do not constitute a separate subspecies of their own and they can breed with orange tigers."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_tiger
White tigers are very rarely found in the wild. They are almost extinct and most of the ones living are in captivity, mostly in zoos.The striking white coat is caused by a double recessive allele in the genetic code, and only turns up naturally about once in every 10,000 births. Amazingly, the Bengal tiger is the only subspecies in which it seems to happen. White tigers in the wild live to be about 10 to 15 years while tigers in zoos usually live between 16 and 20 years.Tigers do not hunt in social groups like lions. They are generally solitary animals. In the wild, tigers will eat pig, cattle and deer. They can eat as much as 40 pounds of meat at one time!(source:http://www.indiantiger.org/white-tigers/ )
- "White tigers are members of this depleting species of tiger, with a population of less than 133 in the world, all of which are confined to life in captivity. The Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio has the highest population, though the lineage derives completely from India.
"White tigers have many birth fatalities because of inbreeding.
Because there are just three gene pools, all of which are native and born in India, inbreeding depressions have shown up in the White tiger, causing stillbirths, early mortality rates, reduced fertility and emergence of physical deformities in the newborns. Unfortunately, even the breeding of a tiger carrying this recessive mutation with a heterozygote individual produced a lop-sided sex ratio of male: female of 1:0.195." (source:http://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/mishra.html )
As cute as the white lion cub is in the photo above, there are some very important concerns about white tigers which you need to learn. I had no idea that these concerns about white tigers existed until I watched the following video: I will let this video created by a United States Company named "Animal Media" who have a Youtube page at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AnimalMedia
educate you about white tigers:
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