Any ideas what is up with "markings" of the cub in the front? I hope it is just dirty, because it doesn't get uglier then that.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
22 day old White Tiger cubs at the Vandalur zoo
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
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5 comments:
Wade, I have seen many things much uglier than this. In fact, I don't think that it is ugly at all, but beautifully unusual. I looked at Sarah Hartwell's Messybeast page about black tigers:
http://www.messybeast.com/genetics/tigers-black.htm
She wrote:
During the early 1970s, Oklahoma City Zoo's pair of tigers produced six litters. Three of the four cubs in the third litter were abnormally coloured. One had the normal background colour but all four limbs were abnormally dark. A second had dark feet, though these gradually grew lighter as it matured and were the normal colour when it reached adulthood. The third, and most interesting, had the normal background colour, but considerable darkening over the shoulders, down both front legs, over the pelvis, and encompassing both black legs. The darkening was more-or-less the same colour as the stripes. The striped pattern was only visible over the darkened areas. Unfortunately, three of the cubs were killed by the mother, leaving only the dark-footed cub. The black cub was preserved in formalin. Quite possibly it would have become lighter in colour as it matured, just like the feet of the surviving cub.
There is also a picture of the preserved black cub.
Mary Ann
Could this be one of those rare cases of abundism or melanism in tigers?
Bjorn
I wonder if that's blood. Sincerely Paul
The "dirty" white tiger has a mutation called abundism where the markings are more abundant than normal and merge into swirls or patches. In extreme cases, abundism becomes pseudomealnism where the background colour is almost obscured.
There was an article in the 5 Tigers' white tiger bibliography titled 'Brown Cub From White Tiger'. It sounds like it could have been the same thing. Sincerely Paul
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