Cub is not very clear in photo, but if you enlarge it, it looks like it has unusually thick stripes covering more of the coat than the base color. I have seen photos of orange tiger skins like this, but never white. White tiger cub turns black in Chennai Zoo - Chennai - City - The Times of India
is the cub supposed to have been born looking like a regular white cub and then changed colour? That seems a bit odd. I think there may a fault in the reporting.... I did like this line: "Reddy ruled out the possibility of inbreeding as the reason for the unusual colouring. "Inbreeding occurs only over generations. The mother, white tigress Anu, has only given birth twice," he said."
the partly-black tiger which is the subject of Arizona Docent's article above was killed in a mating attempt last year. Mating bid turns fatal for white tiger at Chennai's Vandalur Zoo - The Hindu
To me it looks the opposite, that the dark is in the (white) base colour, rather than it having thicker stripes. I've seen film of Orange tigers that have the much thicker striping patterns, which I think is also a genetic mutant, but to me it doesn't look like one of those. By 'pure white' I presume they mean the other two cubs are normal white patterning, like the mother is.
as per the article above, "Sembian was largely black in colour due to dominance of pigment melanin in his skin." The tiger is now dead.
the article itself is about the partly-black tiger being killed in a mating attempt. The photo attached to the article I think is not of the two animals in question. I was confused about that as well, but the article plainly says the tiger killed was the partly-black tiger and that the other regular white tiger was also seriously injured.
Ah, sorry, I didn't read it properly. I realise now the cub(photo'd) and the adult tiger(not pictured) referred to are one and the same? The photo accompanying the article is of two 'normal' White tigers, not the 'black' one. I doubt his colour had anything to do with his death- more likely due to incompatability or poor timing of the introduction.
that's fine, I have edited my sentence above the article to make it clearer I haven't been able to find any photos of the tiger as an adult which is surprising, but I did find this better photo of it as a cub where you can see just how black it is: Tamilnadu | Destinations | Aringnar Anna Zoological Park
I've heard about so-called 'black tigers' before but have actually never seen one that warrants that description before. In this 2nd better photo, the black looks like a sooty ground colour, particularly on the lower back, flanks and an area on the shoulder. The stripes look fairly typical underneath it. I would certainly have liked to see a photo of this tiger as an adult too- its odd they didn't have one to use with the article.
that link no longer goes to where it used to go, but I have managed to find some additional photos of this animal: when it was new-born, when it was older, and when it was adult. I couldn't attach the middle photo (it's a jpeg) so the link is here: LOSING STRIPES? The white-turned-black tiger cub at the Vandalur zoo in Chennai
