lions and tigers and peacocks oh my. the question i had looking at the white tigers of the mirage was "why are there white tigers?" they certainly shouldn't occur naturally in the wild, because their coloring would make for poor camouflage (they live in the jungles and not the artic), and that should be enough to eventually kill off all white tigers. white tigers were obviously not albino either so the question remained in everybody's mind. possible answers were that the white tigers could camouflage just as well, because the stripes were still there. or that white tigers were localized in a certain area so that although they were at a disadvantage, they could still exist. some of these ideas were right. some of these ideas were wrong.



but allow the guessing to cease. the answers are now clear. thanks to a bit of reading on this site, i have been opened up to the world of white tigers and i am armed with words like melanism, chinchilla albinistic, and leucism to explain to you gentle reader, why there are white tigers.



the simple answer to the "why are there white tigers?" question is that "they are all sick and twisted and mutated and in-bred and sleep with each other even though they are related." ewwww. yes. most white tigers are in-bred. oedipus was apparently a white tiger in man's clothing.



the longer answer is that the white coloration is the result of a recessive gene. as is everything cool. if levi's ever came out with a recessive jean, i'm buying it, no questions asked. anyhow. the white tiger is rare because both the mother and the father need to have the white recessive gene. most white tigers have blue eyes although sometimes they can be a golden or green color. all white tigers are from the same species of tiger, a bengalese tiger. but you knew all this already of course. on to the cool stuff.



all the excessive in-breeding causes white tigers to exhibit signs of how-you-say, weird shit. weird shit like abortions, stillbirths, unexplained mortalities, crossed eyes, curvature of the spine, twisted necks, shortened tendons and in the case of white lions, missing manes. it's a curse to be a white tiger. so the white tiger that we saw, the one that looked like it was about to puke? it was probably okay. it was just in-bred, it's not gonna puke, he's supposed to look like that.



wild white tigers are considered to be extinct in the wild. and white tigers aren't even endangered because technically they are not a separate species and thus not eligible for endangerment. tell that to your girlfriend. "we are technically still the same species so thus ineligible for endangerment or break up." white tigers did once exist in the wild and litters of normal and white colored tigers have been reported and documented. however, white tiger and lions are now only bred in captivity and the philosophy of in-breeding to create a "non-natural" animal is up for some debate.



there a possible fourteen possible color combinations in a tiger. who knew? the site covers nine of them. check it out man. fascinating stuff. nature is so damn cool. there are so many weird aberrant creatures. i'm stunned that me, an animal lover and collector, did not know there were white elephants, alligators or peacocks. geez. i have so much to learn and so little time. you can cross breed lions and tigers to produce tigons and ligers! how dope is that? and let's not even get started on how cool fish are. the animal kingdom is undoubtably the greatest kingdom of all.



in the manly kingdom of assam, the belief existed that anyone sighting a white tiger would soon die. which does not bode well for the millions of people who pass through vegas yearly. although this does prove that siegfried and roy really are out to to get us. the lesson we have learned today is that you can mix your lions and tigers but never ever mix one -er with the other because then you might get weirdo results like white, cross eyed, short tendoned offspring.