Captive white tigers
Encyclopedia
Captive white tigers are of unknown lineage and likely of mixed ancestry. The Tiger Species Survival Plan
devised by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums
has condemned the breeding of white tiger
s. The gene
s responsible for white colour are represented by 0.001% of the population. However, in 2008–2009, a closing stock of 264 Bengal tiger
s and 100 white Bengal tigers were accounted for in Indian zoos. The disproportionate growth in numbers of the latter points to the relentless inbreeding
resorted to among homozygous recessive
individuals for selectively multiplying the white animals. This progressively increasing process will eventually lead to inbreeding depression
and loss of genetic variability
.
Mohan was the founding father of the white tiger
s of Rewa
. He was captured as a cub in 1951 by Maharaja
Shri Martand Singh of Rewa, whose hunting party in Bandhavgarh
found a tigress with four 9-month-old cubs, one of which was white. All of them were shot except for the white cub. After shooting a white tiger in 1948 the Maharaja of Rewa had resolved to capture one, as his father had done in 1915, at his next opportunity.Water was used to lure the thirsty cub into a cage, after he returned to a kill made by his mother. The white cub mauled a man during the capture process and was clubbed on the head and knocked unconscious. He was not necessarily expected to wake up, and this was his second brush with death. He recovered though, and was housed in the unused palace at Govindgarh
in the erstwhile harem courtyard. The Maharaja named him Mohan, which roughly translates as "Enchanter", one of the many names of the Hindu
deity Krishna
.
The white tiger the previous Maharaja had kept in captivity from 1915 to 1920 was also a male, unusually large like most white tigers (Mohan was no exception in this regard), and had a white male sibling still living in the wild. After the captive white tiger's death in 1920 he was mounted and presented to the Emperor King George V
, as a token of loyalty. This specimen is now in the British Museum
. The first live white tiger reached England in 1820, and was exhibited at London
's Exeter Change
menagerie where it was examined by the famous French
anatomist
Georges Cuvier
, who described it in his "Animal Kingdom" as having faint stripes only visible from certain angles of refraction. In 1960 there was a mounted white tiger, with faint reddish brown stripes, in the throne room of the Maharaja of Rewa.
In 1953, Mohan was bred to a normal-coloured wild tigress called Begum ("royal consort"), which produced two male orange cubs on September 7, one of which went to Bombay Zoo. In 1955 they had a litter
of two males and two females on April 10 (which included a male named Sampson and a female named Radha), all normal-coloured. On July 10, 1956 they again had a litter of two males and two females, which included a male named Sultan who went to Ahmedabad Zoo, and a female named Vindhya who went to Delhi Zoo and was later bred to an unrelated male named Suraj. Once again, the breeding experiments failed to yield a single white cub.
Mohan was then bred to his daughter Radha (who carried the white gene inherited from her father) with success. The initial litter of four cubs—a male named Raja, and three females named Rani, Mohini, and Sukeshi—were the first white tigers born in captivity, on October 30, 1958. Raja and Rani went to the New Delhi Zoo, and Mohini was bought by the German-American billionaire John Kluge for $10,000, for the Smithsonian National Zoological Park
, as a gift to the children of America
, in 1960.
The Government of India
made a deal with the Maharaja, under the terms of which Raja and Rani would go to the New Delhi Zoo for free. In exchange the Maharaja's white tiger breeding would be subsidized and he would receive a share of their cubs. He wanted Rs 100,000 for them. Technically Sukeshi was also the property of the New Delhi Zoo, and in a sense India had nationalized the captive white tigers of Rewa. The Parliament of India
would hear reports on the progress of the white tigers, and Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi
and U Nu
of Burma participated in public christening ceremonies for white cubs at New Delhi Zoo. Sukeshi remained at Govindgarh Palace, in the harem courtyard where she was born, as a mate for Mohan.
That same year, India imposed a ban on the export of white tigers, in an effort to preserve a monopoly (as a tourist attraction), possibly because Anglo-Indian naturalist Edward Pritchard Gee
recommended that Govindgarh Palace, and its white tiger inhabitants, be made a "national trust", which did not happen. Mohini was only allowed to leave India because US President Dwight D. Eisenhower
intervened personally with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
, to ask for the release of the United States government's white tiger. A white sister of Mohini's had been brought to New Delhi the year before to show the President, who was no stranger to white tigers. After the export ban was imposed the Maharaja threatened to release all of his white tigers into the Rewa forest, and so he was given dispensation to sell two more pairs abroad, to offset his costs.
Six zoos acquired white tigers from the Maharaja of Rewa including the Bristol Zoo
in England
(a brother and sister pair named Champak and Chameli on June 22, 1963 for the equivalent of $10,000 each.) and the Crandon Park
Zoo (which closed around 1983, and moved out of Crandon Park to the site of the Miami MetroZoo) in Miami
acquired a white tigress in 1968. Bristol Zoo's pair, born in 1962, came from another litter of four, all white, but two (one female and one male) did not survive. Years later the Bristol Zoo needed a new breeding male and traded a white female to New Delhi Zoo for a white tiger named Roop, who had been named by U Nu, the Prime Minister of Burma. He was the son of Raja by his own mother and half sister- Radha, born in New Delhi. Radha, and many other tigers from Govindgarh including Sukeshi, were later transferred to New Delhi. Begum went to live at Ahmedabad Zoo and was bred to her son Sultan. They produced twelve cubs in four litters between 1958 and 1961. Bristol Zoo later transferred two male white tigers to Dudley Zoo
.
The government of West Bengal
bought two white males, named Niladari and Himadri, from the Maharaja for the Alipore Zoological Gardens
(Calcutta Zoo), and an orange female named Malini, from the same litter of three born in 1960, accompanied them there. The Alipore Zoo in Kolkata
, recovered the purchase price of its white tigers within six months by charging extra to see them. By 1966 the Bombay Zoo had a white tigress named Lakshmi, born in 1964, from the Maharaja. The Calcutta Zoo sold a white tigress named Sefali to Gauhati Zoo and sent a second white tiger there on loan. Circus owner Clyde Beatty
also bought a white tiger from the Maharaja in 1960, for $10,000 in a deal facilitated by the Smithsonian National Zoological Park director T.H. Reed, who had traveled to India to escort Mohini to Washington
, which had to be canceled because of the export ban, which made Mohini even more valuable. She was estimated to be worth $28,000. President Tito
of Yugoslavia
visited New Delhi Zoo and asked for white tigers for Belgrade
Zoo, but was refused. A white tiger named Dalip from New Delhi Zoo represented India in two international expositions in Budapest
and Osaka
. A white tigress named Nandni, who was born in New Delhi Zoo in 1971, went to Hyderabad Zoo. By 1976 the Lucknow Zoo also had a white tiger which was a gift from New Delhi Zoo. Zoos with white tigers constituted a most exclusive club and the white tigers themselves represented a single extended family. In 1965 or 1966 Terence Walton, a member of the Maharaja of Rewa's staff, was attending a performance of the Ringling Bros. Circus in Madison Square Garden
and had a note passed to tiger trainer Charles Baumann, on the Maharaja's stationary, requesting an opportunity to discuss white tigers. He may have hoped to make a sale. Baumann was invited to Rewa, but was not able to go.
Mohan was featured in the National Geographic documentary "Great Zoos Of The World" in 1970.
He died later that year, aged almost 20, and was laid to rest with Hindu
rites as the palace staff observed official mourning. He was the last recorded white tiger born in the wild. The last white tiger seen in the wild was shot in 1958 in the Hazaribagh forests of Bihar. There have been rumors of white tigers in Hazaribagh, the Tora forsts of Rewa, and Kanha National Park
since 1958, but these were not considered credible by K.S. Sankhala. A photograph of Mohan's stuffed head, in a display case in the private museum of the Maharaja of Rewa in Govindgarh Lake Palace, appears in the National Geographic book "The Year Of The Tiger." Another picture of Mohan's head appears on the official website of the Maharaja of Rewa (MP).
The Maharaja of Rewa turned Mohan's native forest into the Bandhavgarh National Park
, because he could not control the poaching. The Maharaja was negotiating the sale of a white male, named Virat, as late as 1976, when he died of enteritis
. Virat was a son of Mohan and Sukeshi.
At Bandhavgarh visitors can stay at the White Tiger Lodge, which is the local version of Tiger Tops in Royal Chitwan in Nepal
. Pushpraj Singh, the reigning Maharaja of Rewa, has asked students to sign a petition to ask the President of India
to return at least two white tigers to Govindgarh Lake Palace, as a tourist attraction.
on December 5, 1960, and went to live at the Lion House, in the National Zoo, in Rock Creek Park
. A reporter for The New York Times described the meeting of Mohini and President Eisenhower: "The President shied noticeably when the beast roared and leaped in his direction inside the traveling cage drawn up on the White House south driveway. An eloquent "Well!" was the President's only comment for the next few seconds." T.H. Reed, the director of the National Zoo, gave this description of Mohini: "Her stripes were black, shading into brown, but her main coat was eggshell white instead of the normal rufous orange. Exotic coloring and magnificent physique made her a tiger without peer. For a two year old kitten she had tremendous growth-almost 190 pounds, three feet tall at the shoulders, and eight feet from nose to tail." White tigers are larger and heavier than regular orange tigers. The average length of a white tiger at birth is 53 cm, compared to 50 cm for a normal orange cub. Shoulder height is 17 cm (normal 12 cm), weight 1.37 kg (normal 1.25 kg). Dalip and Krishna, two white tigers at New Delhi Zoo, weighed 139 kg and 120 kg respectively, at two years of age. Ram and Jim, two normal colored tigers at the same zoo, weighed 106 kg and 119 kg, at the same age. Raja, the white tiger, had a shoulder height of 100 cm, at ten years of age, while Suraj, an orange tiger, had a shoulder height of only 90 cm, at 12 years of age, according to New Delhi Zoo director K.S. Sankhala. Ratna and Vindhya, orange tigresses "from the white race", who carried the white gene as a recessive (both were fathered by Mohan), were higher at the shoulder than average, measuring 87 and 88 cm, compared to a normal orange tigress named Asharfi, who measured 82 cm at the shoulder. White tigers also grow faster than orange tigers. This would have given them an advantage in the wild.
Following Mohini's arrival in New York City from India, with National Zoo director T.H. Reed, she spent one night in the Bronx Zoo
A reception was scheduled at the Explorer's Club, and Mohini was to appear on the children's television show "Wonderama", with big game hunter Ralph S. Scott, who had been instrumental in bringing her to America. Mohini was also scheduled to appear on television in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. On Dec. 7, 1960 a television special was aired titled "White Tiger", which was a film about Mohini's trip from India. (The birth of Mohini's first litter in 1964 was televised in a national special.) Mohini was exhibited for three days in the Philadelphia Zoo
, before traveling on to Washington. Her name is the feminine of Mohan, and translates as "Enchantress". She was her father's namesake. She was a great attraction, and the zoo wanted to breed more white tigers. At the time, no more white tigers were being allowed out of India, so Mohini was mated to Sampson, her uncle and half brother, who was sent from Ahmedabad Zoo in 1963. (It seems probable that financial considerations may have also precluded Washington from acquiring a second white tiger as a mate for Mohini.) Sampson was donated to the National Zoo by Ralph S. Scott. Mohini was originally betrothed to an orange Bengal tiger named "Mighty Mo", who was captured in Central India in the forests of the Maharaja of Panna
by Ralph S. Scott, and donated to the National Zoo on June 19, 1959. Today there is a Panna National Park
. Unfortunately Mohini used to push Mighty Mo around. The original plan was to breed Mohini with an unrelated orange tiger, and then breed her to one or more of her male offspring, in the hope of producing white cubs. That was before Sampson arrived. Sampson fathered the first two of Mohini's four litters, which were born in 1964 and 1966. Mighty Mo and another tiger named "Foa" were given to the Pittsburgh Zoo in August 1966.
After Sampson's death in 1966, at age 11 of kidney failure
, Mohini was bred to her son Ramana, who was then the only male white gene carrier available. This resulted in the birth of a white daughter named Rewati on April 13, 1969 and a white son named Moni on Feb. 8, 1970. Moni died of a neurological disorder
in 1971 at 16 months. Moni was to have undertaken a fund raising tour for Project Tiger
. He was born in a litter of five, which included two white males and three orange females. One was stillborn and the mother crushed the others after three days. When Moni was a cub he was photographed with Mrs. Suharto, the wife of Indonesian President Suharto, when she visited the National Zoo. Rewati had an orange male littermate which died after two days. Ramana was born on July 1, 1964 and had two litter mates-a white male named Rajkumar, who was the first white tiger born in a zoo, and an orange female named Ramani. Both died of feline distemper
despite having been vaccinated, at ten months of age. Rajkumar had a particularly nasty disposition. All of Mohini's cubs were named by the Indian Ambassador. At the time of his death, at only ten months of age, Rajkumar already weighed 175 pounds, and could hardly be called a cub. He was first named "Charlie" by one of his keepers, before the Indian Ambassador gave him his official name. The National Zoo planned to trade Rajkumar for a number of other animals. He was equal to ten zebras in value. The Smithsonian Institution stepped in and vetoed the plan, insisting that Rajkumar would remain a permanent resident of Washington D.C. Rajkumar was the only white tiger fathered by Sampson.
The birth of Mohini's first litter was televised in a national special. Mohini's orange daughter Kesari was born in 1966 with an orange female who was stillborn. It was even suggested, although probably not too seriously, that Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
be asked to bring a white tiger cub for the zoo, when she was scheduled to visit Washington in 1966. After Moni died in 1971 the National Zoo tried to acquire an orange tiger named Ram from Trivandrum Zoo, in southern India, as a mate for Mohini. Ram was her first cousin, a grandson of Mohan, and there was a 50% chance that he carried white genes. 25% of Ram's genes came from Mohan and 25% from Begum. 25% of Mohini's genes were from Begum and 75% from Mohan. Ram was a son of Vindhya and Suraj born on 23 IV 1965 at New Delhi Zoo, the same Ram discussed earlier. Two sisters of Ram, born on 22 Feb. 1967, went to the Romanshorn
Zoo in Switzerland
. In 1973 an Indochinese Tiger
(Panthera tigris corbetti) named Poona, who was born at the Woodland Park Zoo
in Seattle in 1962, was sent to Washington on a six month breeding loan from the Brookfield Zoo
and bred to Mohini and Kesari. (Poona would have been regarded as a Bengal tiger for the first two years of his life because the Indo-Chinese subspecies was not recognized until 1968.) Mohini did not conceive. Kesari produced six orange cubs, an extraordinary number, especially for a first litter, but only one survived, a female named Marvina. Kesari handed Marvina over to her keepers and kept the other five. Marvina was mistaken for male, and named Marvin which was changed to Marvina when it was discovered that he was a she. Washington Zoo keeper Art Cooper, who hand reared Marvina, observed that white tigers were the most obstinate cats in the zoo, and said that Marvina had a typical white tiger personality. (Poona also fathered litters by two other tigresses in Brookfield.) In 1974 Marvina, Ramana, and Kesari were sent to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden
, and Rewati and Mohini went to the Brookfield Zoo, to be boarded during renovations in Washington, until 1976. On June 20, 1974 while at the Cincinnati Zoo Ramana and Kesari produced a litter of three white and one orange cub, including a white male named Ranjit, two white females named Bharat and Priya, and an orange male named Peela. Devra Kleiman of the National Zoo said that she knew all about the white gene and made a point of asking that these tigers (Ramana, Kesari, or Marvina)not be bred while in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Zoo said that Ramana and Kesari never bred in Washington, but they did so shortly after arriving in Ohio.
As a fringe benefit of inbreeding the four cubs were pure-Bengal tigers, and they were the last registered Bengal tigers born in the United States. Ranjit, Bharat, Priya, Peela, and Rewati had inbreeding coefficients of 0.406. Ramana died in 1974 of a kidney infection and became a father for the last time posthumously.
A white half sister of Mohini's, bred from Mohan and Sukishi, born on March 26, 1966, named Gomti and later renamed Princess, lived in the Crandon Park Zoo in Miami for almost three years, before she died of a viral infection at age five in December 1970. She arrived in Miami on January 13, 1968.
Miami mayor Chuck Hall met the 22-month-old 350 lbs. white tigress at the airport and rode with her to the zoo. He wanted to call her Maya, the name suggested by the Maharaja, which translates as Princess. Ralph S. Scott, who paid $35,000 for her and gave her to the Zoological Society of Florida, preferred the name Princess. The Zoological Society of Florida loaned Princess to the Crandon Park Zoo. It was Ralph S. Scott, a famous big game hunter, who suggested to John W. Kluge that he buy a white tiger for the children of America. He had seen the white tigers in Govindgarh Palace while tiger hunting in India. The government of India wanted Princess to be the last white tiger exported from the country. A male white tiger, named Ravi, acquired by Ralph S. Scott for the Crandon Park Zoo died at Kanpur railway station en route from India in 1967. He was a son of Raja and Rani born in New Delhi Zoo, and sold by the Maharaja of Rewa. In 1970 Jimmy Stewart was on the Johnny Carson Show and said that his wife was going to buy a white tiger from the Maharaja of Rewa for the Los Angeles Zoo. Ralph S. Scott was watching and felt as though he was being robbed. He had been trying to get a mate for Princess for years. A bidding war erupted between Scott, Jimmy Stewart, a major league baseball team, a Hollywood producer, and a major European zoo. Scott said of Princess "It is cruel to expect an animal like that to live alone. And you can't mate her with an ordinary tiger-she's so superior...I appealed to the Maharaja from a conservation standpoint and it hit home." Princess and Rajah were to be a "royal couple." The Los Angeles Zoo had already spent $20,000 building a white tiger exhibit. Scott said that he would try and send them a pair of cubs from Princess and Rajah, but Princess died a week before Rajah was scheduled to arrive. Scott hired an Indian taxidermist to stuff Princess, and she was presented to the Museum Of Science in Miami in 1972, but she is now in the reception area of the Miami MetroZoo's administration building. Scott paid around $45,000 for Raja, who he thought might still be mated to Mohini, but Rajah never arrived in Crandon Park. Scott was so respected as a tiger hunter that he was asked to deal with man eaters which were terrorizing villages. He was a hunter turned conservationist, and a cat-lover. Mohini died in 1979. The skins and skulls of Mohini and Moni are in the Smithsonian
, but are not on display.
An orange brother of Mohini's named Ramesh lived in the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes
(Paris Zoo), and was bred to an unrelated tigress, but none of the offspring survived to reproduce. Ramesh was born in Govindgarh Palace and had an orange female littermate, named Ratna who went to New Delhi Zoo, and a white male littermate named Ramu. They were the fourth and last litter of Mohan and Radha. Ratna was paired with a wild caught male named Jim, at New Delhi Zoo, and produced three litters. Each cub would have had a 50% chance of inheriting the white gene from Ratna. Jim was captured in the Rewa forest, so they thought there was a chance he carried white genes. He had been somebody's pet, but after he ate a cat he was given to New Delhi Zoo. Jim used to appear leaping into his pond, at New Delhi Zoo, in the opening of one of Gerald Durrell
's TV shows. Edward Pritchard Gee
mentioned, in his book "The Wildlife Of India" (which has a foreword by Jawaharlal Nehru
), that Bristol Zoo wanted to acquire one of the cubs of Mohan and Begum, as a mate for one of its white tigers, Champak or Chameli, to lessen the degree of inbreeding, as the US National Zoo had done with Sampson. The Bristol Zoo did acquire one of the daughters of Mohan and Begum. In 1987 Ranjit, Bharat, Priya, and Peela were sold to the International Animal Exchange. Ranjit, Priya, and Peela went to the IAE's facility in Grand Prairie, Texas
. The phenomenon of spontaneous ovulation
in a tiger was first observed by Devra Kleiman, in one of the white tigresses at the National Zoo, which meant that it was possible to breed tigers by artificial insemination
.
Mohini died in 1979 at 20 years of age. Edwards Park wrote in Smithsonian magazine that National Zoo director Ted Reed was "mourning his queen the late Mohini Rewa." Ted Reed said "It's impossible to say how much the zoo owes that cat and her cubs. They drew attention to the facility and made all of our recent improvements so much easier. If she had been human she would have been a movie star."
, was the founder of many American white tiger lines, especially those used in circuses. His grandfather was a registered Siberian tiger, named Kubla, who was born at the Como Park, Zoo, and Conservatory in Saint Paul, Minnesota
. Kubla's parents were born in the wild and believed to be brother and sister. Kubla was bred to a Bengal tigress named Susie, from a west coast zoo, at the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls
in South Dakota
. She was once co-owned by Clyde Beatty
. Between April 10, 1966 and August 3, 1969 Kubla and Susie produced 13 or 14 cubs in 5 or 6 litters. The cubs were widely distributed. One eventually reached Paris, and another went from the Utica Zoo, in New York, to Japan. Two of their cubs (Rajah and Sheba II) were bred by Baron Julius Von Uhl, who lived in Peru, Indiana. Julius Von Uhl was born in Budapest
and came to America in 1956 from Hungary
after the revolution. One of the results of his tiger breeding was Tony, who therefore carried mixed blood He may have been the source of a gene for stripelessness. Kubla was also bred to an Amur tigress named Katrina, who was born at the Rotterdam
Zoo, and passed through the hands of two American zoos before joining Kubla and Susie at the Great Plains Zoo. Kubla and Katrina have living pure-Amur descendants which may include a line of white tigers, that are claimed as pure-Amurs, which originated out of Center Hill, Florida
. These white tigers are not registered Amur tigers. A tiger trainer named Alan Gold owned a pair of Amur tigers which once produced a stillborn white cub.
In 1972 there were four white tigers in the United States: Mohini and her daughter Rewati in Washington D.C., Tony, and his first cousin named Bagheera
, a female born on July 8, 1972 in a litter of two white cubs, including a male which did not survive, in the Hawthorn Circus of John F. Cuneo Jr. Bagheera's mother, Sheba III, was a sister of Tony's mother, Sheba II. Bagheera's father was either an Amur tiger, named Ural, who was her preferred mate, and may have been her uncle and a littermate, or younger sibling, of Kubla, born at the Como Zoo; or one of two of her brothers, named Prince and Saber, who were also brothers to Tony's parents.
Most of Sheba III's litters did not include white cubs, but at least 50% of her orange cubs would have been white gene carriers, since they could have inherited the gene from their mother, and if both parents were heterozygotes 66%, or two out of three, of their orange cubs are likely to have been carriers. She had 27 cubs in 9 litters between July 8, 1972 and July 26, 1975, of which only 3 were white, or 11%, not 25% as would be expected if both parents in each mating were heterozygotes. Prince was castrated
before Sheba III conceived another white cub, a male named Frosty, born on Feb. 25, 1975, in a litter which included two orange females and one orange male. It seems odd that a tiger which may have been fathering such valuable cubs (Prince) would have been neutered. Saber was never observed trying to mate, so perhaps Ural did sire one or more of Sheba III's white cubs, which would have been three quarters Siberian had this been the case. It is possible for tigers from the same litter to have different fathers. It's also possible that any or all three tigers-Ural, Prince, and Saber, carried the white gene. Ural was a sad specimen. He was cross eyed, although he was not white. Bagheera and Frosty were both severely cross eyed.
Tony was purchased by John F. Cuneo Jr., owner of the Hawthorn Circus Corp. of Grayslake, Illinois
, in February 1975 for $20,000 in Detroit. Tony's parents, Raja and Sheba, produced two more white cubs at the Baltimore County Fair on June 27, 1976. The cubs were a white male, named "Baltimore County Fair", a white female named "Snowball", and an orange male. National Zoo spokeswoman Sybille Hamlem said: "This could be a real bonus for the breed if the two stay in the United States. The white tigers are no longer found in the wild and there have been genetic problems because of inbreeding. But that's apparently not the case here." Snowball's name was later changed to "Maharani", and all three cubs were sold to the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in Washington D.C.. Maharani died in 1984. Baron Julius Von Uhl had another three white cubs born between June 18 and 19, 1977 at Kingdom's 3 (formerly Lion Country Safari
) at Stockbridge
, Georgia
off I-75 south of Atlanta. Two lived only a short time. The other, named Scarlett O'Hara, died at the Grady Memorial Hospital's animal research clinic in Atlanta, on Jan. 30, 1978, of cardiac arrest resulting from anaesthesia. She was there to undergo surgery to correct crossed eyes. (She was only cross eyed in the right eye, which turned inward toward the nose.) She was still owned by Julius Von Uhl at the time. Tony was sent on breeding loan to the Cincinnati Zoo in 1976, to be bred to Rewati from the US National Zoo. However, Tony and Rewati did not breed, so he was bred to Mohini's orange daughter Kesari instead, resulting in a litter of four white and one orange cub June 27, 1976, the same day that eight year old Sheba had her white cubs in Baltimore, Maryland. It is an astounding coincidence that both tigresses gave birth to white cubs on exactly the same day. On that one day America's white tiger population nearly doubled from 8 to 14. Kesari's 1976 litter represented a mixture of the two unrelated strains.
All of the white cubs from Kesari's 1976 litter by Tony were cross-eyed, as were Rewati, Bagheera, and Frosty. The Cincinnati Zoo retained a brother and sister pair from the litter, named Bhim and Sumita, and their orange sister Kamala. Two white males returned to the Hawthorn Circus with Tony as John Cuneo's share from the breeding loan. John Cuneo also asked the Bristol Zoo to trade some white tigers, to diversify the gene pool, but the Bristol Zoo declined, perhaps not wishing to exchange pure-Bengals for mongrels. Tony, Bagheera, and Frosty lived for years with a troop of Hawthorn Circus tigers stationed at Marineland and Game Farm
, in Niagara Falls, Ontario
, Canada
. Because of selective breeding only a few of the oldest white tigers in the Hawthorn Circus today are cross eyed
. Bhim and Sumita became the world record parents of white cubs. In 1976 there were 39 white tigers-7 in New Delhi, 7 in Kolkata, one in Guwahati
, one in Lucknow
, one in Hyderabad, 8 in Bristol
, Cincinnati Zoo had 2, Washington had 5, John Cuneo had 5, and Julius Von Uhl had 2. The Maharaja of Rewa retired from the white tiger business in 1976. He later abdicated in favor of his son so that he could run for the family seat in parliament and became an MP. There is a white tiger cub on the shield of the coat of arms of the Maharajas of Rewa.
Over 70 white tigers have been born at the Cincinnati Zoo, which is no longer in the white tiger business. The Cincinnati Zoo sold white tigers for $60,000 each. Siegfried & Roy bought a litter of three white cubs from the Cincinnati Zoo, which were offspring of Bhim and Sumita, for around $125,000. Prior to 1974 the Cincinnati Zoo wanted to acquire a white tiger, but no zoo would sell at any price. By the 1980s the Cincinnati Zoo was the world's leading purveyor of white tigers. It was a cousin of the Maharaja of Rewa, Lt. Col. Fatesinghrao "Jackie" Gaekwad, the Maharaja of Baroda, who was also the Commissioner of Indian Wildlife and an MP, who suggested to Siegfried and Roy that they acquire white tigers from the Cincinnati Zoo and include them in their act."Jackie" was also the President of the World Wildlife Fund India. In the mid 1980s Siegfried & Roy owned 10% of the world's white tigers, and they were escorting two big white tiger cubs, with dark stripes, to their new home in Phantasialand
in Bruhl
, Germany
, when the white tigers were briefly stolen with their truck in New York City. The driver stopped for coffee. The white tigers made their debut in Germany at a ceremony attended by the United States Ambassador.
The Henry Doorly Zoo
in Omaha, Nebraska
bought Tony's parents and orange sister Obie (born in 1975) in 1978, and bred more white tigers. Kesari also went to live at Omaha
Zoo, but did not have any more cubs. Some of Tony's white siblings born in Omaha proved to be sterile. Obie was paired with Ranjit from the National Zoo, and their cubs like those of Tony and Kesari, included non inbred white tigers. A white tiger named Chester, who was a son of Ranjit and Obie, born at the Omaha Zoo, fathered the first test tube tigers, and then became the first white tiger in Australia
when he was sent to the Taronga Zoo
in Sydney
. His brother, Panghur Ban, was the National Zoo's last white tiger. A white tiger named Rajiv, a son of Bhim, became the first white tiger in Africa
, when he was sent to Pretoria Zoo in exchange for a king cheetah.
In 1983 Rewati was paired with Ika, from Kesari's 1976 litter, at the Columbus Zoo. By this time he was a three legged amputee retired from circus performance, put out to pasture to breed. Ika killed Rewati in the act of mating. Ika was then mated with a white tigress named Taj, who was a grand daughter of his brothers Ranjit and Bhim. Ika was also bred to Taj's orange mother Dolly, a daughter of Bhim and an unrelated orange tigress named Kimanthi, in Columbus. Taj's father, Duke, was a son of Ranjit from an outcross to an unrelated orange tigress. Isson, a white grandson of Kesari and Tony, was also dispatched to Columbus on breeding loan from the Hawthorn Circus, of Grayslake, Illinois, which eventually had 80 white tigers, the largest collection in the world at the time. In 1984 five white tiger cubs were stolen from the Hawthorn Circus in Portland, Oregon, and two died. The tigers were touring with the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. The culprit was a veterinarian who was sentenced to one year in prison and six months in a halfway house. Cincinnati Zoo director Ed Maruska testified in the case that the five white cubs had a dollar value in excess of $5000.
In 1974 a white cub was born in the Racine Zoological Gardens
in Wisconsin
, from a father-daughter mating. The father, named Bucky, killed the white cub. The mother, named Bonnie, was later bred with an orange littermate of Tony named "Chequila", who belonged to James Witchey of Ravenna, Ohio
, who bought him from Dick Hartman of South Lebanon, Ohio
, when he was four or five years of age. Chequila proved to be a white gene carrier and fathered at least one white cub in the Racine Zoo in 1980. It is not known whether Bucky, who came from the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo
in Indiana
, and his daughter Bonnie, were related to any of the established strains of white tigers, but it is possible that Bucky was another one of the cubs of Kubla and Susie, born in Sioux Falls. By 1987 10% of North American zoo tigers were white.
, Orissa
, India in 1980. Their parents were an orange father–daughter pair called Deepak and Ganga, who were not related to Mohan or any other captive white tiger – one of their wild-caught ancestors would have carried the recessive white gene, and it showed up when Deepak was mated to his daughter. Deepak's sister also turned out to be a white gene carrier. These white tigers are therefore referred to as the Orissa strain, as opposed to the Rewa strain, of white tigers founded by Mohan.
When the surprise birth of three white cubs occurred there was a white tigress already living at the zoo, named Diana, from New Delhi Zoo. One of the three was later bred to her creating another blend of two unrelated strains of white tigers. This lineage resulted in several white tigers in Nandan Kanan Zoo. Today the Nandankanan Zoo has the largest collection of white tigers in India. The Cincinnati Zoo acquired two female white tigers from the Nandan Kanan Zoo, in the hopes of establishing a line of pure-Bengal white tigers in America, but they never got a male, and did not receive authorization from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums
(AZA)'s Species Survival Plan
(SSP) to breed them. The Zoo Outreach Organisation used to publish studbooks for white tigers, which were compiled by A.K. Roychoudhury of the Bose Institute
in Calcutta, and subsidized by the Humane Society of India. The Columbus Zoo had also hoped to breed pure-Bengal white tigers, but were unable to obtain a white registered Bengal mate for Rewati from India.
There were also surprise births of white tigers in the Asian Circus, in India, to parents not known to have been white gene carriers, or heterozygotes, and not known to have any relationship to any other white tiger strains. There was a female white cub born at Mysore Zoo
in 1984, from orange parents, descended from Deepak's sister. The white cub's grandmother Thara came from the Nandankanan Zoo in 1972. Mysore Zoo had a second female white tiger cub from New Delhi Zoo in 1984. On August 29, 1979 a white tigress named Seema was dispatched to Kanpur Zoo to be bred to Badal, a tiger who was a fourth generation descendant of Mohan and Begum. The pair did not breed so it was decided to pair Seema with one of two wild caught, notorious man eaters, either Sheru or Titu, from the Jim Corbett National Park
. Seema and Sheru produced a white cub, and for a while it was thought there might be white genes in Corbett's population of tigers, but the cub did not stay white.
There have been other cases of white tiger, white lion
, and white panther
cubs being born, and then changing to normal color. White tigers which were a mixture of the Rewa and Orissa strains, born at the Nandan Kanan Zoo, were non inbred. A white tiger from out of the Orissa strain found its way to the Western Plains Zoo
in Australia
. Australia's Dreamworld
, on the Gold Coast
, wanted to breed this tiger to one of their white tigers from the United States.
Species Survival Plan
The American Species Survival Plan or SSP program was developed in 1981 by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to help ensure the survival of selected species in zoos and aquariums, most of which are threatened or endangered in the wild....
devised by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums
Association of Zoos and Aquariums
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums was founded in 1924 and is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of zoos and public aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation.The AZA headquarters is located in Silver...
has condemned the breeding of white tiger
White tiger
The white tiger is a recessive mutant of the Bengal tiger, which was reported in the wild from time to time in Assam, Bengal, Bihar and especially from the former State of Rewa.-Color comparison:...
s. The gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
s responsible for white colour are represented by 0.001% of the population. However, in 2008–2009, a closing stock of 264 Bengal tiger
Bengal Tiger
The Bengal tiger is a tiger subspecies native to the Indian subcontinent that in 2010 has been classified as endangered by IUCN...
s and 100 white Bengal tigers were accounted for in Indian zoos. The disproportionate growth in numbers of the latter points to the relentless inbreeding
Inbreeding
Inbreeding is the reproduction from the mating of two genetically related parents. Inbreeding results in increased homozygosity, which can increase the chances of offspring being affected by recessive or deleterious traits. This generally leads to a decreased fitness of a population, which is...
resorted to among homozygous recessive
Recessive
In genetics, the term "recessive gene" refers to an allele that causes a phenotype that is only seen in a homozygous genotype and never in a heterozygous genotype. Every person has two copies of every gene on autosomal chromosomes, one from mother and one from father...
individuals for selectively multiplying the white animals. This progressively increasing process will eventually lead to inbreeding depression
Inbreeding depression
Inbreeding depression is the reduced fitness in a given population as a result of breeding of related individuals. It is often the result of a population bottleneck...
and loss of genetic variability
Genetic variability
Genetic variability is a measure of the tendency of individual genotypes in a population to vary from one another. Variability is different from genetic diversity, which is the amount of variation seen in a particular population. The variability of a trait describes how much that trait tends to...
.
Mohan and the Rewa strain
White tiger
The white tiger is a recessive mutant of the Bengal tiger, which was reported in the wild from time to time in Assam, Bengal, Bihar and especially from the former State of Rewa.-Color comparison:...
s of Rewa
Rewa, India
Rewa is formerly the capital of the princely state of Rewa and former state of Vindhya Pradesh in central India. It is an important city in the North Eastern part of Madhya Pradesh state of India bordering Allahabad, Mirzapur and Banda Districts of Uttar Pradesh and Satna and Sidhi Districts of...
. He was captured as a cub in 1951 by Maharaja
Maharaja
Mahārāja is a Sanskrit title for a "great king" or "high king". The female equivalent title Maharani denotes either the wife of a Maharaja or, in states where that was customary, a woman ruling in her own right. The widow of a Maharaja is known as a Rajamata...
Shri Martand Singh of Rewa, whose hunting party in Bandhavgarh
Bandhavgarh National Park
Bandhavgarh National Park is one of the popular national parks in India located in the Umaria district of Madhya Pradesh. Bandhavgarh was declared a national park in 1968 with an area of 105 km². The buffer is spread over the forest divisions of Umaria and Katni and totals 437 km²...
found a tigress with four 9-month-old cubs, one of which was white. All of them were shot except for the white cub. After shooting a white tiger in 1948 the Maharaja of Rewa had resolved to capture one, as his father had done in 1915, at his next opportunity.Water was used to lure the thirsty cub into a cage, after he returned to a kill made by his mother. The white cub mauled a man during the capture process and was clubbed on the head and knocked unconscious. He was not necessarily expected to wake up, and this was his second brush with death. He recovered though, and was housed in the unused palace at Govindgarh
Govindgarh, Madhya Pradesh
-Description:Govindgarh the summer capital of Mahraja Rewa is about 13 k. M. from Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. The Rewa, with an area of about 13,000 mi², was the largest princely state in the Bagelkhand Agency and the second largest in Central India Agency. The British political agent for...
in the erstwhile harem courtyard. The Maharaja named him Mohan, which roughly translates as "Enchanter", one of the many names of the Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
deity Krishna
Krishna
Krishna is a central figure of Hinduism and is traditionally attributed the authorship of the Bhagavad Gita. He is the supreme Being and considered in some monotheistic traditions as an Avatar of Vishnu...
.
The white tiger the previous Maharaja had kept in captivity from 1915 to 1920 was also a male, unusually large like most white tigers (Mohan was no exception in this regard), and had a white male sibling still living in the wild. After the captive white tiger's death in 1920 he was mounted and presented to the Emperor King George V
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
, as a token of loyalty. This specimen is now in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
. The first live white tiger reached England in 1820, and was exhibited at London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's Exeter Change
Exeter Exchange
The Exeter Exchange was a building on the north side of the Strand in London, with an arcade extending partway across the carriageway...
menagerie where it was examined by the famous French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
anatomist
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...
Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
, who described it in his "Animal Kingdom" as having faint stripes only visible from certain angles of refraction. In 1960 there was a mounted white tiger, with faint reddish brown stripes, in the throne room of the Maharaja of Rewa.
In 1953, Mohan was bred to a normal-coloured wild tigress called Begum ("royal consort"), which produced two male orange cubs on September 7, one of which went to Bombay Zoo. In 1955 they had a litter
Litter (animal)
A litter is the offspring at one birth of animals from the same mother and usually from one set of parents. The word is most often used for the offspring of mammals, but can be used for any animal that gives birth to multiple young. In comparison, a group of eggs and the offspring that hatch from...
of two males and two females on April 10 (which included a male named Sampson and a female named Radha), all normal-coloured. On July 10, 1956 they again had a litter of two males and two females, which included a male named Sultan who went to Ahmedabad Zoo, and a female named Vindhya who went to Delhi Zoo and was later bred to an unrelated male named Suraj. Once again, the breeding experiments failed to yield a single white cub.
Mohan was then bred to his daughter Radha (who carried the white gene inherited from her father) with success. The initial litter of four cubs—a male named Raja, and three females named Rani, Mohini, and Sukeshi—were the first white tigers born in captivity, on October 30, 1958. Raja and Rani went to the New Delhi Zoo, and Mohini was bought by the German-American billionaire John Kluge for $10,000, for the Smithsonian National Zoological Park
Smithsonian National Zoological Park
The Smithsonian National Zoological Park, commonly known as the National Zoo, is one of the oldest zoos in the United States, and as part of the Smithsonian Institution, does not charge admission. Founded in 1889, its mission is to provide leadership in animal care, science, education,...
, as a gift to the children of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, in 1960.
The Government of India
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...
made a deal with the Maharaja, under the terms of which Raja and Rani would go to the New Delhi Zoo for free. In exchange the Maharaja's white tiger breeding would be subsidized and he would receive a share of their cubs. He wanted Rs 100,000 for them. Technically Sukeshi was also the property of the New Delhi Zoo, and in a sense India had nationalized the captive white tigers of Rewa. The Parliament of India
Parliament of India
The Parliament of India is the supreme legislative body in India. Founded in 1919, the Parliament alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all political bodies in India. The Parliament of India comprises the President and the two Houses, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha...
would hear reports on the progress of the white tigers, and Prime Minister
Prime Minister of India
The Prime Minister of India , as addressed to in the Constitution of India — Prime Minister for the Union, is the chief of government, head of the Council of Ministers and the leader of the majority party in parliament...
Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
and U Nu
U Nu
For other people with the Burmese name Nu, see Nu .U Nu was a leading Burmese nationalist and political figure of the 20th century...
of Burma participated in public christening ceremonies for white cubs at New Delhi Zoo. Sukeshi remained at Govindgarh Palace, in the harem courtyard where she was born, as a mate for Mohan.
That same year, India imposed a ban on the export of white tigers, in an effort to preserve a monopoly (as a tourist attraction), possibly because Anglo-Indian naturalist Edward Pritchard Gee
Edward Pritchard Gee
Edward Pritchard Gee was a Cambridge educated, Anglo-Indian tea-planter and an amateur naturalist in Assam, India. He is credited with the 1953 discovery of Gee's Golden Langur...
recommended that Govindgarh Palace, and its white tiger inhabitants, be made a "national trust", which did not happen. Mohini was only allowed to leave India because US President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
intervened personally with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...
, to ask for the release of the United States government's white tiger. A white sister of Mohini's had been brought to New Delhi the year before to show the President, who was no stranger to white tigers. After the export ban was imposed the Maharaja threatened to release all of his white tigers into the Rewa forest, and so he was given dispensation to sell two more pairs abroad, to offset his costs.
Six zoos acquired white tigers from the Maharaja of Rewa including the Bristol Zoo
Bristol Zoo
Bristol Zoo is a zoo in the city of Bristol in South West England. The zoo's stated mission is "Bristol Zoo Gardens maintains and defends biodiversity through breeding endangered species, conserving threatened species and habitats and promoting a wider understanding of the natural...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
(a brother and sister pair named Champak and Chameli on June 22, 1963 for the equivalent of $10,000 each.) and the Crandon Park
Crandon Park
Crandon Park is a urban park in metropolitan Miami, occupying the northern part of Key Biscayne. It is connected to mainland Miami via the Rickenbacker Causeway.-History:...
Zoo (which closed around 1983, and moved out of Crandon Park to the site of the Miami MetroZoo) in Miami
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
acquired a white tigress in 1968. Bristol Zoo's pair, born in 1962, came from another litter of four, all white, but two (one female and one male) did not survive. Years later the Bristol Zoo needed a new breeding male and traded a white female to New Delhi Zoo for a white tiger named Roop, who had been named by U Nu, the Prime Minister of Burma. He was the son of Raja by his own mother and half sister- Radha, born in New Delhi. Radha, and many other tigers from Govindgarh including Sukeshi, were later transferred to New Delhi. Begum went to live at Ahmedabad Zoo and was bred to her son Sultan. They produced twelve cubs in four litters between 1958 and 1961. Bristol Zoo later transferred two male white tigers to Dudley Zoo
Dudley Zoo
Dudley Zoological Gardens is a zoo located within the grounds of Dudley Castle in the town of Dudley, in the Black Country region of the West Midlands, England...
.
West Bengal
West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...
bought two white males, named Niladari and Himadri, from the Maharaja for the Alipore Zoological Gardens
Alipore Zoological Gardens
The Alipore Zoological Gardens is India's oldest formally stated zoological park and a big tourist attraction in Kolkata, West Bengal. It has been open as a zoo since 1876, and covers...
(Calcutta Zoo), and an orange female named Malini, from the same litter of three born in 1960, accompanied them there. The Alipore Zoo in Kolkata
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
, recovered the purchase price of its white tigers within six months by charging extra to see them. By 1966 the Bombay Zoo had a white tigress named Lakshmi, born in 1964, from the Maharaja. The Calcutta Zoo sold a white tigress named Sefali to Gauhati Zoo and sent a second white tiger there on loan. Circus owner Clyde Beatty
Clyde Beatty
Clyde Beatty joined the circus as a cage cleaner as a teen and became famous as a lion tamer and animal trainer. He also became a circus impresario who owned his own show that later merged with the Cole Bros. Circus to form the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros...
also bought a white tiger from the Maharaja in 1960, for $10,000 in a deal facilitated by the Smithsonian National Zoological Park director T.H. Reed, who had traveled to India to escort Mohini to Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, which had to be canceled because of the export ban, which made Mohini even more valuable. She was estimated to be worth $28,000. President Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
visited New Delhi Zoo and asked for white tigers for Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
Zoo, but was refused. A white tiger named Dalip from New Delhi Zoo represented India in two international expositions in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
and Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
. A white tigress named Nandni, who was born in New Delhi Zoo in 1971, went to Hyderabad Zoo. By 1976 the Lucknow Zoo also had a white tiger which was a gift from New Delhi Zoo. Zoos with white tigers constituted a most exclusive club and the white tigers themselves represented a single extended family. In 1965 or 1966 Terence Walton, a member of the Maharaja of Rewa's staff, was attending a performance of the Ringling Bros. Circus in Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
and had a note passed to tiger trainer Charles Baumann, on the Maharaja's stationary, requesting an opportunity to discuss white tigers. He may have hoped to make a sale. Baumann was invited to Rewa, but was not able to go.
Mohan was featured in the National Geographic documentary "Great Zoos Of The World" in 1970.
He died later that year, aged almost 20, and was laid to rest with Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
rites as the palace staff observed official mourning. He was the last recorded white tiger born in the wild. The last white tiger seen in the wild was shot in 1958 in the Hazaribagh forests of Bihar. There have been rumors of white tigers in Hazaribagh, the Tora forsts of Rewa, and Kanha National Park
Kanha National Park
Kanha National Park is a national park and a Tiger Reserve in the Mandla and Balaghat districts of Madhya Pradesh, India. In the 1930s, Kanha area was divided into two sanctuaries, Hallon and Banjar, of 250 and 300 km² . Kanha National Park was created on 1 June, 1955. Today it stretches over an...
since 1958, but these were not considered credible by K.S. Sankhala. A photograph of Mohan's stuffed head, in a display case in the private museum of the Maharaja of Rewa in Govindgarh Lake Palace, appears in the National Geographic book "The Year Of The Tiger." Another picture of Mohan's head appears on the official website of the Maharaja of Rewa (MP).
The Maharaja of Rewa turned Mohan's native forest into the Bandhavgarh National Park
Bandhavgarh National Park
Bandhavgarh National Park is one of the popular national parks in India located in the Umaria district of Madhya Pradesh. Bandhavgarh was declared a national park in 1968 with an area of 105 km². The buffer is spread over the forest divisions of Umaria and Katni and totals 437 km²...
, because he could not control the poaching. The Maharaja was negotiating the sale of a white male, named Virat, as late as 1976, when he died of enteritis
Enteritis
In medicine, enteritis, from Greek words enteron and suffix -itis , refers to inflammation of the small intestine. It is most commonly caused by the ingestion of substances contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms. Symptoms include abdominal pain, cramping, diarrhea, dehydration and fever...
. Virat was a son of Mohan and Sukeshi.
At Bandhavgarh visitors can stay at the White Tiger Lodge, which is the local version of Tiger Tops in Royal Chitwan in Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
. Pushpraj Singh, the reigning Maharaja of Rewa, has asked students to sign a petition to ask the President of India
President of India
The President of India is the head of state and first citizen of India, as well as the Supreme Commander of the Indian Armed Forces. President of India is also the formal head of all the three branches of Indian Democracy - Legislature, Executive and Judiciary...
to return at least two white tigers to Govindgarh Lake Palace, as a tourist attraction.
Mohini Rewa (Enchantress) and Sampson
Mohini, a daughter of Mohan, was officially presented to President Eisenhower by John W. Kluge, in a ceremony at the White HouseWhite House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
on December 5, 1960, and went to live at the Lion House, in the National Zoo, in Rock Creek Park
Rock Creek Park
Rock Creek Park is a large urban natural area with public park facilities that bisects Washington, D.C. The park is administered by the National Park Service.-Rock Creek Park:The main section of the park contains , or , along the Rock Creek Valley...
. A reporter for The New York Times described the meeting of Mohini and President Eisenhower: "The President shied noticeably when the beast roared and leaped in his direction inside the traveling cage drawn up on the White House south driveway. An eloquent "Well!" was the President's only comment for the next few seconds." T.H. Reed, the director of the National Zoo, gave this description of Mohini: "Her stripes were black, shading into brown, but her main coat was eggshell white instead of the normal rufous orange. Exotic coloring and magnificent physique made her a tiger without peer. For a two year old kitten she had tremendous growth-almost 190 pounds, three feet tall at the shoulders, and eight feet from nose to tail." White tigers are larger and heavier than regular orange tigers. The average length of a white tiger at birth is 53 cm, compared to 50 cm for a normal orange cub. Shoulder height is 17 cm (normal 12 cm), weight 1.37 kg (normal 1.25 kg). Dalip and Krishna, two white tigers at New Delhi Zoo, weighed 139 kg and 120 kg respectively, at two years of age. Ram and Jim, two normal colored tigers at the same zoo, weighed 106 kg and 119 kg, at the same age. Raja, the white tiger, had a shoulder height of 100 cm, at ten years of age, while Suraj, an orange tiger, had a shoulder height of only 90 cm, at 12 years of age, according to New Delhi Zoo director K.S. Sankhala. Ratna and Vindhya, orange tigresses "from the white race", who carried the white gene as a recessive (both were fathered by Mohan), were higher at the shoulder than average, measuring 87 and 88 cm, compared to a normal orange tigress named Asharfi, who measured 82 cm at the shoulder. White tigers also grow faster than orange tigers. This would have given them an advantage in the wild.
Following Mohini's arrival in New York City from India, with National Zoo director T.H. Reed, she spent one night in the Bronx Zoo
Bronx Zoo
The Bronx Zoo is located in the Bronx borough of New York City, within Bronx Park. It is the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, comprising of park lands and naturalistic habitats, through which the Bronx River flows....
A reception was scheduled at the Explorer's Club, and Mohini was to appear on the children's television show "Wonderama", with big game hunter Ralph S. Scott, who had been instrumental in bringing her to America. Mohini was also scheduled to appear on television in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. On Dec. 7, 1960 a television special was aired titled "White Tiger", which was a film about Mohini's trip from India. (The birth of Mohini's first litter in 1964 was televised in a national special.) Mohini was exhibited for three days in the Philadelphia Zoo
Philadelphia Zoo
The Philadelphia Zoo, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the west bank of the Schuylkill River, was the first zoo in the United States. Chartered by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on March 21, 1859, its opening was delayed by the American Civil War until July 1, 1874...
, before traveling on to Washington. Her name is the feminine of Mohan, and translates as "Enchantress". She was her father's namesake. She was a great attraction, and the zoo wanted to breed more white tigers. At the time, no more white tigers were being allowed out of India, so Mohini was mated to Sampson, her uncle and half brother, who was sent from Ahmedabad Zoo in 1963. (It seems probable that financial considerations may have also precluded Washington from acquiring a second white tiger as a mate for Mohini.) Sampson was donated to the National Zoo by Ralph S. Scott. Mohini was originally betrothed to an orange Bengal tiger named "Mighty Mo", who was captured in Central India in the forests of the Maharaja of Panna
Panna
Panna can refer to:* Aam panna, an Indian drink made from mangoes* Panna, Madhya Pradesh, a city in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India* Panna district, a district in Sagar Division of Madhya Pradesh, India* Panna National Park, in Madhya Pradesh, India...
by Ralph S. Scott, and donated to the National Zoo on June 19, 1959. Today there is a Panna National Park
Panna National Park
Panna National Park is a national park located in Panna and Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh in India. It has an area of about 543 square miles . The terrain in Panna National Park is undulating and heavily forested with many streams and waterfalls.Among the animals found here are the chital,...
. Unfortunately Mohini used to push Mighty Mo around. The original plan was to breed Mohini with an unrelated orange tiger, and then breed her to one or more of her male offspring, in the hope of producing white cubs. That was before Sampson arrived. Sampson fathered the first two of Mohini's four litters, which were born in 1964 and 1966. Mighty Mo and another tiger named "Foa" were given to the Pittsburgh Zoo in August 1966.
After Sampson's death in 1966, at age 11 of kidney failure
Renal failure
Renal failure or kidney failure describes a medical condition in which the kidneys fail to adequately filter toxins and waste products from the blood...
, Mohini was bred to her son Ramana, who was then the only male white gene carrier available. This resulted in the birth of a white daughter named Rewati on April 13, 1969 and a white son named Moni on Feb. 8, 1970. Moni died of a neurological disorder
Neurology
Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...
in 1971 at 16 months. Moni was to have undertaken a fund raising tour for Project Tiger
Project Tiger
Project Tiger was launched in 1972 in India. The project aims at ensuring a viable population of tigers in their natural habitats and preserving areas of biological importance as a natural heritage for the people. The selection of areas for the reserves represented as close as possible the...
. He was born in a litter of five, which included two white males and three orange females. One was stillborn and the mother crushed the others after three days. When Moni was a cub he was photographed with Mrs. Suharto, the wife of Indonesian President Suharto, when she visited the National Zoo. Rewati had an orange male littermate which died after two days. Ramana was born on July 1, 1964 and had two litter mates-a white male named Rajkumar, who was the first white tiger born in a zoo, and an orange female named Ramani. Both died of feline distemper
Feline panleukopenia
Feline panleukopenia virus , also known as Feline infectious enteritis, Feline distemper, feline ataxia, or cat plague, is a viral infection affecting cats, both domesticated and wild feline species. It is caused by feline parvovirus, a close relative of both type 2 canine parvovirus and mink...
despite having been vaccinated, at ten months of age. Rajkumar had a particularly nasty disposition. All of Mohini's cubs were named by the Indian Ambassador. At the time of his death, at only ten months of age, Rajkumar already weighed 175 pounds, and could hardly be called a cub. He was first named "Charlie" by one of his keepers, before the Indian Ambassador gave him his official name. The National Zoo planned to trade Rajkumar for a number of other animals. He was equal to ten zebras in value. The Smithsonian Institution stepped in and vetoed the plan, insisting that Rajkumar would remain a permanent resident of Washington D.C. Rajkumar was the only white tiger fathered by Sampson.
The birth of Mohini's first litter was televised in a national special. Mohini's orange daughter Kesari was born in 1966 with an orange female who was stillborn. It was even suggested, although probably not too seriously, that Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
be asked to bring a white tiger cub for the zoo, when she was scheduled to visit Washington in 1966. After Moni died in 1971 the National Zoo tried to acquire an orange tiger named Ram from Trivandrum Zoo, in southern India, as a mate for Mohini. Ram was her first cousin, a grandson of Mohan, and there was a 50% chance that he carried white genes. 25% of Ram's genes came from Mohan and 25% from Begum. 25% of Mohini's genes were from Begum and 75% from Mohan. Ram was a son of Vindhya and Suraj born on 23 IV 1965 at New Delhi Zoo, the same Ram discussed earlier. Two sisters of Ram, born on 22 Feb. 1967, went to the Romanshorn
Romanshorn
Romanshorn is a municipality in the district of Arbon in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland.-History:Romanshorn was probably settled in the 7th Century, and is first mentioned in 779 as Rumanishorn in a land grant from Waldrata to the Abbey of St. Gall. During the Late Middle Ages and until...
Zoo in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. In 1973 an Indochinese Tiger
Indochinese Tiger
The Indochinese tiger or Corbett's tiger is a subspecies of tiger found in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam and formerly in China. Tigers in peninsular Malaysia, formerly classified as Indochinese, have recently been reclassified as a separate subspecies, Malayan tiger Panthera tigris...
(Panthera tigris corbetti) named Poona, who was born at the Woodland Park Zoo
Woodland Park Zoo
Woodland Park Zoo is a zoological garden around the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Occupying the western half of Woodland Park, the zoo began as a small menagerie on the estate of Guy C. Phinney, a Canadian-born lumber mill owner and real estate developer...
in Seattle in 1962, was sent to Washington on a six month breeding loan from the Brookfield Zoo
Brookfield Zoo
The Brookfield Zoo is zoo located in the Chicago suburb of Brookfield, Illinois. The zoo covers an area of and houses around 450 species of animals....
and bred to Mohini and Kesari. (Poona would have been regarded as a Bengal tiger for the first two years of his life because the Indo-Chinese subspecies was not recognized until 1968.) Mohini did not conceive. Kesari produced six orange cubs, an extraordinary number, especially for a first litter, but only one survived, a female named Marvina. Kesari handed Marvina over to her keepers and kept the other five. Marvina was mistaken for male, and named Marvin which was changed to Marvina when it was discovered that he was a she. Washington Zoo keeper Art Cooper, who hand reared Marvina, observed that white tigers were the most obstinate cats in the zoo, and said that Marvina had a typical white tiger personality. (Poona also fathered litters by two other tigresses in Brookfield.) In 1974 Marvina, Ramana, and Kesari were sent to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden
Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden
The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden is the second-oldest zoo in the United States and is located in Cincinnati, Ohio. It opened in 1875, just 14 months after the Philadelphia Zoo on July 1, 1874. The Reptile House is the oldest zoo building in the United States, dating from 1875.The Cincinnati...
, and Rewati and Mohini went to the Brookfield Zoo, to be boarded during renovations in Washington, until 1976. On June 20, 1974 while at the Cincinnati Zoo Ramana and Kesari produced a litter of three white and one orange cub, including a white male named Ranjit, two white females named Bharat and Priya, and an orange male named Peela. Devra Kleiman of the National Zoo said that she knew all about the white gene and made a point of asking that these tigers (Ramana, Kesari, or Marvina)not be bred while in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Zoo said that Ramana and Kesari never bred in Washington, but they did so shortly after arriving in Ohio.
As a fringe benefit of inbreeding the four cubs were pure-Bengal tigers, and they were the last registered Bengal tigers born in the United States. Ranjit, Bharat, Priya, Peela, and Rewati had inbreeding coefficients of 0.406. Ramana died in 1974 of a kidney infection and became a father for the last time posthumously.
A white half sister of Mohini's, bred from Mohan and Sukishi, born on March 26, 1966, named Gomti and later renamed Princess, lived in the Crandon Park Zoo in Miami for almost three years, before she died of a viral infection at age five in December 1970. She arrived in Miami on January 13, 1968.
Miami mayor Chuck Hall met the 22-month-old 350 lbs. white tigress at the airport and rode with her to the zoo. He wanted to call her Maya, the name suggested by the Maharaja, which translates as Princess. Ralph S. Scott, who paid $35,000 for her and gave her to the Zoological Society of Florida, preferred the name Princess. The Zoological Society of Florida loaned Princess to the Crandon Park Zoo. It was Ralph S. Scott, a famous big game hunter, who suggested to John W. Kluge that he buy a white tiger for the children of America. He had seen the white tigers in Govindgarh Palace while tiger hunting in India. The government of India wanted Princess to be the last white tiger exported from the country. A male white tiger, named Ravi, acquired by Ralph S. Scott for the Crandon Park Zoo died at Kanpur railway station en route from India in 1967. He was a son of Raja and Rani born in New Delhi Zoo, and sold by the Maharaja of Rewa. In 1970 Jimmy Stewart was on the Johnny Carson Show and said that his wife was going to buy a white tiger from the Maharaja of Rewa for the Los Angeles Zoo. Ralph S. Scott was watching and felt as though he was being robbed. He had been trying to get a mate for Princess for years. A bidding war erupted between Scott, Jimmy Stewart, a major league baseball team, a Hollywood producer, and a major European zoo. Scott said of Princess "It is cruel to expect an animal like that to live alone. And you can't mate her with an ordinary tiger-she's so superior...I appealed to the Maharaja from a conservation standpoint and it hit home." Princess and Rajah were to be a "royal couple." The Los Angeles Zoo had already spent $20,000 building a white tiger exhibit. Scott said that he would try and send them a pair of cubs from Princess and Rajah, but Princess died a week before Rajah was scheduled to arrive. Scott hired an Indian taxidermist to stuff Princess, and she was presented to the Museum Of Science in Miami in 1972, but she is now in the reception area of the Miami MetroZoo's administration building. Scott paid around $45,000 for Raja, who he thought might still be mated to Mohini, but Rajah never arrived in Crandon Park. Scott was so respected as a tiger hunter that he was asked to deal with man eaters which were terrorizing villages. He was a hunter turned conservationist, and a cat-lover. Mohini died in 1979. The skins and skulls of Mohini and Moni are in the Smithsonian
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
, but are not on display.
An orange brother of Mohini's named Ramesh lived in the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes
Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes
The Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes is a zoo in Paris, France, belonging to the botanical garden Jardin des Plantes. It is the first and thus the oldest civil zoological garden in the world.- The location :...
(Paris Zoo), and was bred to an unrelated tigress, but none of the offspring survived to reproduce. Ramesh was born in Govindgarh Palace and had an orange female littermate, named Ratna who went to New Delhi Zoo, and a white male littermate named Ramu. They were the fourth and last litter of Mohan and Radha. Ratna was paired with a wild caught male named Jim, at New Delhi Zoo, and produced three litters. Each cub would have had a 50% chance of inheriting the white gene from Ratna. Jim was captured in the Rewa forest, so they thought there was a chance he carried white genes. He had been somebody's pet, but after he ate a cat he was given to New Delhi Zoo. Jim used to appear leaping into his pond, at New Delhi Zoo, in the opening of one of Gerald Durrell
Gerald Durrell
Gerald "Gerry" Malcolm Durrell, OBE was a naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter...
's TV shows. Edward Pritchard Gee
Edward Pritchard Gee
Edward Pritchard Gee was a Cambridge educated, Anglo-Indian tea-planter and an amateur naturalist in Assam, India. He is credited with the 1953 discovery of Gee's Golden Langur...
mentioned, in his book "The Wildlife Of India" (which has a foreword by Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...
), that Bristol Zoo wanted to acquire one of the cubs of Mohan and Begum, as a mate for one of its white tigers, Champak or Chameli, to lessen the degree of inbreeding, as the US National Zoo had done with Sampson. The Bristol Zoo did acquire one of the daughters of Mohan and Begum. In 1987 Ranjit, Bharat, Priya, and Peela were sold to the International Animal Exchange. Ranjit, Priya, and Peela went to the IAE's facility in Grand Prairie, Texas
Grand Prairie, Texas
Grand Prairie is a city in Dallas, Ellis, and Tarrant counties in the U.S. state of Texas and is a part of the Mid-Cities region in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Grand Prairie is a suburb of both Dallas and Fort Worth and had a population of 175,396 at the 2010 census.- History :The city of...
. The phenomenon of spontaneous ovulation
Ovulation
Ovulation is the process in a female's menstrual cycle by which a mature ovarian follicle ruptures and discharges an ovum . Ovulation also occurs in the estrous cycle of other female mammals, which differs in many fundamental ways from the menstrual cycle...
in a tiger was first observed by Devra Kleiman, in one of the white tigresses at the National Zoo, which meant that it was possible to breed tigers by artificial insemination
Artificial insemination
Artificial insemination, or AI, is the process by which sperm is placed into the reproductive tract of a female for the purpose of impregnating the female by using means other than sexual intercourse or natural insemination...
.
Mohini died in 1979 at 20 years of age. Edwards Park wrote in Smithsonian magazine that National Zoo director Ted Reed was "mourning his queen the late Mohini Rewa." Ted Reed said "It's impossible to say how much the zoo owes that cat and her cubs. They drew attention to the facility and made all of our recent improvements so much easier. If she had been human she would have been a movie star."
Tony, Bagheera, and Frosty: A new strain
Tony, born in July 1972 in the Circus Winter Quarters of the Cole Bros. Circus (the Terrell Jacobs farm) in Peru, IndianaPeru, Indiana
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 12,994 people, 5,410 households, and 3,397 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,815.5 people per square mile . There were 5,943 housing units at an average density of 1,287.7 per square mile...
, was the founder of many American white tiger lines, especially those used in circuses. His grandfather was a registered Siberian tiger, named Kubla, who was born at the Como Park, Zoo, and Conservatory in Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...
. Kubla's parents were born in the wild and believed to be brother and sister. Kubla was bred to a Bengal tigress named Susie, from a west coast zoo, at the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Sioux Falls is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Dakota. Sioux Falls is the county seat of Minnehaha County, and also extends into Lincoln County to the south...
in South Dakota
South Dakota
South Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux American Indian tribes. Once a part of Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889. The state has an area of and an estimated population of just over...
. She was once co-owned by Clyde Beatty
Clyde Beatty
Clyde Beatty joined the circus as a cage cleaner as a teen and became famous as a lion tamer and animal trainer. He also became a circus impresario who owned his own show that later merged with the Cole Bros. Circus to form the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros...
. Between April 10, 1966 and August 3, 1969 Kubla and Susie produced 13 or 14 cubs in 5 or 6 litters. The cubs were widely distributed. One eventually reached Paris, and another went from the Utica Zoo, in New York, to Japan. Two of their cubs (Rajah and Sheba II) were bred by Baron Julius Von Uhl, who lived in Peru, Indiana. Julius Von Uhl was born in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
and came to America in 1956 from Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
after the revolution. One of the results of his tiger breeding was Tony, who therefore carried mixed blood He may have been the source of a gene for stripelessness. Kubla was also bred to an Amur tigress named Katrina, who was born at the Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
Zoo, and passed through the hands of two American zoos before joining Kubla and Susie at the Great Plains Zoo. Kubla and Katrina have living pure-Amur descendants which may include a line of white tigers, that are claimed as pure-Amurs, which originated out of Center Hill, Florida
Center Hill, Florida
Center Hill is a city in Sumter County, Florida, United States. The population was 909 at the 2000 census. According to the U.S Census estimates of 2006, the city had a population of 996. The current mayor is Ralph Barry.-Geography:...
. These white tigers are not registered Amur tigers. A tiger trainer named Alan Gold owned a pair of Amur tigers which once produced a stillborn white cub.
In 1972 there were four white tigers in the United States: Mohini and her daughter Rewati in Washington D.C., Tony, and his first cousin named Bagheera
Bagheera
Bagheera the black-toned Indian Leopard is an animal fictional character in Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories in The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book...
, a female born on July 8, 1972 in a litter of two white cubs, including a male which did not survive, in the Hawthorn Circus of John F. Cuneo Jr. Bagheera's mother, Sheba III, was a sister of Tony's mother, Sheba II. Bagheera's father was either an Amur tiger, named Ural, who was her preferred mate, and may have been her uncle and a littermate, or younger sibling, of Kubla, born at the Como Zoo; or one of two of her brothers, named Prince and Saber, who were also brothers to Tony's parents.
Most of Sheba III's litters did not include white cubs, but at least 50% of her orange cubs would have been white gene carriers, since they could have inherited the gene from their mother, and if both parents were heterozygotes 66%, or two out of three, of their orange cubs are likely to have been carriers. She had 27 cubs in 9 litters between July 8, 1972 and July 26, 1975, of which only 3 were white, or 11%, not 25% as would be expected if both parents in each mating were heterozygotes. Prince was castrated
Castration
Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male loses the functions of the testicles or a female loses the functions of the ovaries.-Humans:...
before Sheba III conceived another white cub, a male named Frosty, born on Feb. 25, 1975, in a litter which included two orange females and one orange male. It seems odd that a tiger which may have been fathering such valuable cubs (Prince) would have been neutered. Saber was never observed trying to mate, so perhaps Ural did sire one or more of Sheba III's white cubs, which would have been three quarters Siberian had this been the case. It is possible for tigers from the same litter to have different fathers. It's also possible that any or all three tigers-Ural, Prince, and Saber, carried the white gene. Ural was a sad specimen. He was cross eyed, although he was not white. Bagheera and Frosty were both severely cross eyed.
Tony was purchased by John F. Cuneo Jr., owner of the Hawthorn Circus Corp. of Grayslake, Illinois
Grayslake, Illinois
Grayslake is a village in Lake County in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is located in the Chicago metropolitan area, about north of Chicago’s downtown, west of Lake Michigan, and south of the Wisconsin border....
, in February 1975 for $20,000 in Detroit. Tony's parents, Raja and Sheba, produced two more white cubs at the Baltimore County Fair on June 27, 1976. The cubs were a white male, named "Baltimore County Fair", a white female named "Snowball", and an orange male. National Zoo spokeswoman Sybille Hamlem said: "This could be a real bonus for the breed if the two stay in the United States. The white tigers are no longer found in the wild and there have been genetic problems because of inbreeding. But that's apparently not the case here." Snowball's name was later changed to "Maharani", and all three cubs were sold to the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in Washington D.C.. Maharani died in 1984. Baron Julius Von Uhl had another three white cubs born between June 18 and 19, 1977 at Kingdom's 3 (formerly Lion Country Safari
Lion Country Safari
Lion Country Safari is a drive-through safari park located in Loxahatchee , in Palm Beach County, Florida. Founded in 1967, it claims to be the first 'cageless zoo' in the United States....
) at Stockbridge
Stockbridge, Georgia
Stockbridge is a city in Henry County, Georgia, United States with a population of 25,636 as of the 2010 census. It is the hometown of the multi-platinum selling alternative rock/post-grunge band Collective Soul and home to one of the youngest starting pitchers ever to play for the Atlanta Braves,...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
off I-75 south of Atlanta. Two lived only a short time. The other, named Scarlett O'Hara, died at the Grady Memorial Hospital's animal research clinic in Atlanta, on Jan. 30, 1978, of cardiac arrest resulting from anaesthesia. She was there to undergo surgery to correct crossed eyes. (She was only cross eyed in the right eye, which turned inward toward the nose.) She was still owned by Julius Von Uhl at the time. Tony was sent on breeding loan to the Cincinnati Zoo in 1976, to be bred to Rewati from the US National Zoo. However, Tony and Rewati did not breed, so he was bred to Mohini's orange daughter Kesari instead, resulting in a litter of four white and one orange cub June 27, 1976, the same day that eight year old Sheba had her white cubs in Baltimore, Maryland. It is an astounding coincidence that both tigresses gave birth to white cubs on exactly the same day. On that one day America's white tiger population nearly doubled from 8 to 14. Kesari's 1976 litter represented a mixture of the two unrelated strains.
All of the white cubs from Kesari's 1976 litter by Tony were cross-eyed, as were Rewati, Bagheera, and Frosty. The Cincinnati Zoo retained a brother and sister pair from the litter, named Bhim and Sumita, and their orange sister Kamala. Two white males returned to the Hawthorn Circus with Tony as John Cuneo's share from the breeding loan. John Cuneo also asked the Bristol Zoo to trade some white tigers, to diversify the gene pool, but the Bristol Zoo declined, perhaps not wishing to exchange pure-Bengals for mongrels. Tony, Bagheera, and Frosty lived for years with a troop of Hawthorn Circus tigers stationed at Marineland and Game Farm
Marineland (Ontario)
Marineland is a themed amusement and animal exhibition park in the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada...
, in Niagara Falls, Ontario
Niagara Falls, Ontario
Niagara Falls is a Canadian city on the Niagara River in the Golden Horseshoe region of Southern Ontario. The municipality was incorporated on June 12, 1903...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Because of selective breeding only a few of the oldest white tigers in the Hawthorn Circus today are cross eyed
Strabismus
Strabismus is a condition in which the eyes are not properly aligned with each other. It typically involves a lack of coordination between the extraocular muscles, which prevents bringing the gaze of each eye to the same point in space and preventing proper binocular vision, which may adversely...
. Bhim and Sumita became the world record parents of white cubs. In 1976 there were 39 white tigers-7 in New Delhi, 7 in Kolkata, one in Guwahati
Guwahati
Guwahati, Pragjyotishpura in ancient Assam formerly known as Gauhati is a metropolis,the largest city of Assam in India and ancient urban area in North East India, with a population of 963,429. It is also the largest metropolitan area in north-eastern India...
, one in Lucknow
Lucknow
Lucknow is the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in India. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of Lucknow District and Lucknow Division....
, one in Hyderabad, 8 in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, Cincinnati Zoo had 2, Washington had 5, John Cuneo had 5, and Julius Von Uhl had 2. The Maharaja of Rewa retired from the white tiger business in 1976. He later abdicated in favor of his son so that he could run for the family seat in parliament and became an MP. There is a white tiger cub on the shield of the coat of arms of the Maharajas of Rewa.
Over 70 white tigers have been born at the Cincinnati Zoo, which is no longer in the white tiger business. The Cincinnati Zoo sold white tigers for $60,000 each. Siegfried & Roy bought a litter of three white cubs from the Cincinnati Zoo, which were offspring of Bhim and Sumita, for around $125,000. Prior to 1974 the Cincinnati Zoo wanted to acquire a white tiger, but no zoo would sell at any price. By the 1980s the Cincinnati Zoo was the world's leading purveyor of white tigers. It was a cousin of the Maharaja of Rewa, Lt. Col. Fatesinghrao "Jackie" Gaekwad, the Maharaja of Baroda, who was also the Commissioner of Indian Wildlife and an MP, who suggested to Siegfried and Roy that they acquire white tigers from the Cincinnati Zoo and include them in their act."Jackie" was also the President of the World Wildlife Fund India. In the mid 1980s Siegfried & Roy owned 10% of the world's white tigers, and they were escorting two big white tiger cubs, with dark stripes, to their new home in Phantasialand
Phantasialand
Phantasialand is an amusement park in Brühl, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany that attracts approximately 2 million visitors annually. The park was opened in 1967 by Gottlieb Löffelhardt and Richard Schmidt. Although starting as a family-oriented park, Phantasialand has also added thrill rides,...
in Bruhl
Brühl
-Places and locations:Germany* Brühl * Brühl * Brühl , a street in LeipzigPoland* Brühl Palace, Warsaw-People:* Alois Friedrich von Brühl , a Polish-Saxon diplomat, politician, soldier, actor and playwright...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, when the white tigers were briefly stolen with their truck in New York City. The driver stopped for coffee. The white tigers made their debut in Germany at a ceremony attended by the United States Ambassador.
The Henry Doorly Zoo
Henry Doorly Zoo
The Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo is a zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, located at 3701 South 10th Street.It is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Its mission is conservation, research, recreation, and education.Omaha's Henry Doorly...
in Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha is the largest city in the state of Nebraska, United States, and is the county seat of Douglas County. It is located in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about 20 miles north of the mouth of the Platte River...
bought Tony's parents and orange sister Obie (born in 1975) in 1978, and bred more white tigers. Kesari also went to live at Omaha
Omaha
Omaha may refer to:*Omaha , a Native American tribe that currently resides in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Nebraska-Places:United States* Omaha, Nebraska* Omaha, Arkansas* Omaha, Georgia* Omaha, Illinois* Omaha, Texas...
Zoo, but did not have any more cubs. Some of Tony's white siblings born in Omaha proved to be sterile. Obie was paired with Ranjit from the National Zoo, and their cubs like those of Tony and Kesari, included non inbred white tigers. A white tiger named Chester, who was a son of Ranjit and Obie, born at the Omaha Zoo, fathered the first test tube tigers, and then became the first white tiger in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
when he was sent to the Taronga Zoo
Taronga Zoo
Taronga Zoo is the city zoo of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Officially opened on 7 October 1916, it is located on the shores of Sydney Harbour in the suburb of Mosman...
in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
. His brother, Panghur Ban, was the National Zoo's last white tiger. A white tiger named Rajiv, a son of Bhim, became the first white tiger in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, when he was sent to Pretoria Zoo in exchange for a king cheetah.
In 1983 Rewati was paired with Ika, from Kesari's 1976 litter, at the Columbus Zoo. By this time he was a three legged amputee retired from circus performance, put out to pasture to breed. Ika killed Rewati in the act of mating. Ika was then mated with a white tigress named Taj, who was a grand daughter of his brothers Ranjit and Bhim. Ika was also bred to Taj's orange mother Dolly, a daughter of Bhim and an unrelated orange tigress named Kimanthi, in Columbus. Taj's father, Duke, was a son of Ranjit from an outcross to an unrelated orange tigress. Isson, a white grandson of Kesari and Tony, was also dispatched to Columbus on breeding loan from the Hawthorn Circus, of Grayslake, Illinois, which eventually had 80 white tigers, the largest collection in the world at the time. In 1984 five white tiger cubs were stolen from the Hawthorn Circus in Portland, Oregon, and two died. The tigers were touring with the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. The culprit was a veterinarian who was sentenced to one year in prison and six months in a halfway house. Cincinnati Zoo director Ed Maruska testified in the case that the five white cubs had a dollar value in excess of $5000.
In 1974 a white cub was born in the Racine Zoological Gardens
Racine Zoological Gardens
The Racine Zoo is a zoo situated on on the shore of Lake Michigan in Racine, Wisconsin. With more than 100 species of animals, the zoo's collection focuses on species native to Wisconsin, including a room dedicated to reptiles and amphibians indigenous to the state.-World Animals:*Red...
in Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
, from a father-daughter mating. The father, named Bucky, killed the white cub. The mother, named Bonnie, was later bred with an orange littermate of Tony named "Chequila", who belonged to James Witchey of Ravenna, Ohio
Ravenna, Ohio
* Chris Bangle; automobile designer* Bill Bower, last surviving pilot of the Doolittle Raid* David D. Busch; best-selling author* William Rufus Day; U.S. Supreme Court justice* Calvin Hampton; Classical organist* Robert B...
, who bought him from Dick Hartman of South Lebanon, Ohio
South Lebanon, Ohio
South Lebanon is a village located in Union and Hamilton Townships in central Warren County in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2000 census, the village population was 2,538, down from 2,696 in 1990...
, when he was four or five years of age. Chequila proved to be a white gene carrier and fathered at least one white cub in the Racine Zoo in 1980. It is not known whether Bucky, who came from the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo
Fort Wayne Children's Zoo
The Fort Wayne Children's Zoo is located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States. Since opening in 1965, the 1,500 animal zoo has been located on in Fort Wayne's Franke Park...
in Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, and his daughter Bonnie, were related to any of the established strains of white tigers, but it is possible that Bucky was another one of the cubs of Kubla and Susie, born in Sioux Falls. By 1987 10% of North American zoo tigers were white.
The Orissa strain
Three white tigers were also born in the Nandankanan Zoo in BhubaneswarBhubaneswar
Bhubaneswar is the capital of the Indian state of Orissa, officially Odisha. The city has a long history of over 2000 years starting with Chedi dynasty who had Sisupalgarh near present-day Bhubaneswar as their capital...
, Orissa
Orissa
Orissa , officially Odisha since Nov 2011, is a state of India, located on the east coast of India, by the Bay of Bengal. It is the modern name of the ancient nation of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka in 261 BC. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April...
, India in 1980. Their parents were an orange father–daughter pair called Deepak and Ganga, who were not related to Mohan or any other captive white tiger – one of their wild-caught ancestors would have carried the recessive white gene, and it showed up when Deepak was mated to his daughter. Deepak's sister also turned out to be a white gene carrier. These white tigers are therefore referred to as the Orissa strain, as opposed to the Rewa strain, of white tigers founded by Mohan.
When the surprise birth of three white cubs occurred there was a white tigress already living at the zoo, named Diana, from New Delhi Zoo. One of the three was later bred to her creating another blend of two unrelated strains of white tigers. This lineage resulted in several white tigers in Nandan Kanan Zoo. Today the Nandankanan Zoo has the largest collection of white tigers in India. The Cincinnati Zoo acquired two female white tigers from the Nandan Kanan Zoo, in the hopes of establishing a line of pure-Bengal white tigers in America, but they never got a male, and did not receive authorization from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums
Association of Zoos and Aquariums
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums was founded in 1924 and is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of zoos and public aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation.The AZA headquarters is located in Silver...
(AZA)'s Species Survival Plan
Species Survival Plan
The American Species Survival Plan or SSP program was developed in 1981 by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to help ensure the survival of selected species in zoos and aquariums, most of which are threatened or endangered in the wild....
(SSP) to breed them. The Zoo Outreach Organisation used to publish studbooks for white tigers, which were compiled by A.K. Roychoudhury of the Bose Institute
Bose Institute
Bose Institute is a research institute in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Plant biology, Microbiology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Animal physiology, Immunotechnology and Environmental science. The institute was established in 1917 by Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose, who was the founder of modern...
in Calcutta, and subsidized by the Humane Society of India. The Columbus Zoo had also hoped to breed pure-Bengal white tigers, but were unable to obtain a white registered Bengal mate for Rewati from India.
There were also surprise births of white tigers in the Asian Circus, in India, to parents not known to have been white gene carriers, or heterozygotes, and not known to have any relationship to any other white tiger strains. There was a female white cub born at Mysore Zoo
Mysore Zoo
Mysore Zoo is a zoo located near the palace in Mysore, India. It is one of the oldest and most popular zoos in Southern India, and is home to a wide range of species. Mysore Zoo is one of the city’s most popular attractions...
in 1984, from orange parents, descended from Deepak's sister. The white cub's grandmother Thara came from the Nandankanan Zoo in 1972. Mysore Zoo had a second female white tiger cub from New Delhi Zoo in 1984. On August 29, 1979 a white tigress named Seema was dispatched to Kanpur Zoo to be bred to Badal, a tiger who was a fourth generation descendant of Mohan and Begum. The pair did not breed so it was decided to pair Seema with one of two wild caught, notorious man eaters, either Sheru or Titu, from the Jim Corbett National Park
Jim Corbett National Park
Jim Corbett National Park—named for the hunter and conservationist Jim Corbett who played a key role in its establishment—is the oldest national park in India. The park was established in 1936 as Hailey National Park...
. Seema and Sheru produced a white cub, and for a while it was thought there might be white genes in Corbett's population of tigers, but the cub did not stay white.
There have been other cases of white tiger, white lion
White lion
The white lion is occasionally found in wildlife reserves in South Africa and is a rare color mutation of the Kruger subspecies of lion . It has been perpetuated by selective breeding in zoos around the world...
, and white panther
White panther
A white panther is a white specimen of any of several species of larger cat. "Panther" is used in some parts of North America to mean the Cougar , in South America to mean the Jaguar and elsewhere it refers to the Leopard . A white panther may therefore be a white cougar, a white jaguar or a white...
cubs being born, and then changing to normal color. White tigers which were a mixture of the Rewa and Orissa strains, born at the Nandan Kanan Zoo, were non inbred. A white tiger from out of the Orissa strain found its way to the Western Plains Zoo
Western Plains Zoo
Taronga Western Plains Zoo, formerly known as Western Plains Zoo and commonly known as Dubbo Zoo, is a large zoo near Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia. It opened to the public on 28 February 1977, to provide more living and breeding space for large animals such as elephants and antelopes which...
in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. Australia's Dreamworld
Dreamworld
Dreamworld is a large theme park situated on the Gold Coast in Queensland. It is currently Australia's largest theme park with over 27 rides including 4 roller coasters. The park is made up of several themed lands: Ocean Parade, Kid's World, Wiggles World, Gold Rush Country, Rocky Hollow, Tiger...
, on the Gold Coast
Gold Coast, Queensland
Gold Coast is a coastal city of Australia located in South East Queensland, 94km south of the state capital Brisbane. With a population approximately 540,000 in 2010, it is the second most populous city in the state, the sixth most populous city in the country, and also the most populous...
, wanted to breed this tiger to one of their white tigers from the United States.