White, Black & Golden Tigers

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Color aberration found in the tigers of Kaziranga Tiger Reserve (Written in 2017 with Rabin Sharma Sir)

Color aberrations are very rare occurrences and are recorded only in few incidents in the wild. Most of us are aware about white tigers, and might have seen in the zoos. Few years back, during 2008 camera trapping, the presence of black tigers was revealed in the jungles of Similipal Tiger Reserve.   

The skin of tigers is orang-yellow with black stripes and whitish abdominal region.  The yellowish background is controlled by a set of ‘agouti genes’ and their alleles and the black colored stripes are controlled by ‘tabby genes’ and their alleles. Suppression of any of these genes may lead to color variation in tiger. 
Various forms of colorations have been recorded in tigers in the zoos or in few wild cases. It may be stripe-less white, with reduced stripes, lighter yellowish, darker whitish, normal light yellowish, normal, normal deep yellowish, rufous, brownish with dark stripes, brownish without dark stripes, blue-melanistic, or black melanistic.

The biological reason of color aberration may be due to excessive inbreeding caused by habitat destruction and loss of connectivity. The recessive genes are showing up due to inbreeding within fragmented population. A recent study done by  Cardiff University and NCBS (National Center for Biological Sciences) have found that 93% of the tiger DNA variants from British period are no longer present in the current tiger population.
 
One tigress with lighter yellowish skin with lighter black stripes and more whitish expressions in the abdominal and in the facial region was photo-captured in the year 2014 for the first time in Kaziranga during all India tiger monitoring exercise. She was also camera trapped in the year 2015. In the year 2016 she was camera-trapped with one more tiger. Conclusion could not be drawn about the other individual whether it was her cub or a mate due to low quality of the image. She was again camera-trapped in the recent camera trapping of 2017. This year she might have crossed minimum age of 4-5 years.  Generally at the stage of 3 to 4 years female gets sexual maturity and give birth. Therefore, she might have given birth or ready to give birth to new babies. It will be very interesting to observe whether her faulty gene will be carried to her successors or not!

Unfortunately, in the photographs we found some serious injury marks on her body. Someone (may be other tiger) has mauled her nose and left forelimb badly. If there is no quick recovery to her wounds, especially the injury on her nose, she may succumb to death. 

However, the finding of this unique individual is not a cause for celebration, but an indication for us to start pondering about better connectivity among the fragmented populations of tigers to prevent one of the serious problems of population decline, i.e. inbreeding.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

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