White Stripes

In the new issue of Current Science, Nicky K Xavier from the Kerala Forest Research Institute, while arguing for a re-introduction policy, suggests that Bengal white tigers can ‘contribute to the natural gene poll of tigers’.

Mohan, the white tiger of Rewa, lives on in legends and in zoos that have tried to breed these albino big cats. Some 50 years after Mohan was spotted, another white tiger might stalk his old stomping grounds. In the new issue of Current Science, Nicky K Xavier from the Kerala Forest Research Institute, while arguing for a re-introduction policy, suggests that Bengal white tigers can ‘contribute to the natural gene poll of tigers’. In zoos, they have displayed a better birth rate and outlived their more vividly striped brothers and sisters. These beneficial health traits that ‘are conserved even in captivity’ might give them that special edge for surviving in the wild.

Rewawhite tiger