Though NZP curator Khan agrees that inbreeding needs to be controlled as far as possible, he staunchly defends their efforts to produce more white tigers. "The white tiger is not a species," Menon said, "propagation of white tigers is a purely captive function, probably driven by popular attraction to the colour of the coat." They contest zoo owners' claims that the 'unnatural' mating process is the only way to preserve a species on the verge of extinction. The rigorous inbreeding employed ever since Mohan and Radha - mating fathers with daughters and granddaughters - has invited much criticism from tiger conservationists, who say the exercise is an economics-driven charade to draw more people to zoos at the cost of the animals' health. "We don't breed humans with leucoderma, do we?" "The white coat is a genetic abnormality," Vivek Menon of the Wildlife Trust of India explained.
The white tigers owe their coat to a recessive gene, which has to be present in both parents for the offspring to be born with a white coat as well. In fact, it was Mohan's striking white coat that apparently saved him from the bullets that killed his mother and three siblings.Ī little more than 60 years later, he is credited as the progenitor of most of the world's white tigers - a feat that was only achieved after Mohan was made to mate with his 'normal coloured' daughter Radha. Mohan was captured as a cub by Martand Singh from the forests of Bandhavgarh, reportedly while on a hunting trip with Maharaja of Jodhpur Ajit Singh. The majestic looking white tiger, which hasn't been spotted in the wild since 1958, is predisposed to a high neonatal mortality owing to a vicious cycle of inbreeding that began with the capture of presumably the last such dweller of the forest by the last maharaja of Rewa in 1951. However, he added that, at times, tigresses cannot lactate at all.īut the story is not Kalpana's and her cubs' alone. The sixth and last cub (not pictured), is being tended in a temperature- controlled environment, away from any visitors other than the vet and attendantĪsked about the possible reasons why Kalpana rejected her litter, Khan explained that it could be as simple as her angry temperament.
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