Contrary to popular belief, White Bengal tigers are not a separate species in their own right, but are a mutant form of the orange Bengal tigers. In the public eye, white, or more correctly, chinchilla tigers are perhaps the colour which is to be most admired.
White Bengal Tiger
The correct term for these tigers is chinchilla albinistic: White Bengal tigers are fully grown at 2 — 3 years of age. Male White Bengal tigers reach weights of — kilograms and up to 3 metres in length. The female White Bengal tigers weigh — kilograms and measure up to 2. White Bengal tigers have stripes all over their body.
Their stripes are like fingerprints, no two are the same. The stripes are not only in the tigers fur, but are a pigmentation of the skin. White Bengal tigers have a white spot on the back of their ears which looks like an eye. White Bengal tigers grow faster and heavier than their orange relatives and with their pale ice blue eyes, white fur with chocolate coloured stripes, pink noses and pink paw pads they are indeed a beautiful sight. Unfortunately, White Bengal tigers are subject to extreme inbreeding because of the demand for their rare colourings.
Inbreeding is not a natural occurrence and can to lead certain deformities in the newborns. A White Bengal tiger cub can only be born when both parents carry the unusual gene for white colouring. The double recessive allele a viable DNA coding that occupies a given position on a chromosome in the genetic code only turns up naturally about once in every 10, births.
For unexplained reasons it seems to occur only in the Bengal subspecies. White Bengal tigers are also called Indian tigers, they are the most numerous in population than any other tiger subspecies. White Bengal tigers were killed as a part of sport carried out by Indian and British royalties. There number declined at a fast rate. White Bengal tigers are one of the only two species of cats that like water. At full running speed they reach speed of up to 60 kilometres per hour. They do not possess great stamina. The average White Bengal tiger sleeps between 16 to 18 hours per day.
White Bengal tigers lead solitary lives and the courtship period and association between mother and cub is their only interaction and association. Tigers are entirely different in their hunting habits from lions. Tigers rest during the day in the shade and begin to hunt for food at dusk.
White Bengal tigers have keen eye sight and a sharp hearing that helps them stalk their prey. Tiger killings are split second actions where the prey hardly has any chance of survival.
The Tigers formidable and retractile claws play a significant role in capturing and holding on to its prey. The home ranges occupied by adult male residents tend to be mutually exclusive, even though one of these residents may tolerate a transient or sub-adult male at least for a time. A male tiger keeps a large territory in order to include the home ranges of several females within its bounds, so that he may maintain mating rights with them.
Spacing among females is less complete. Typically there is partial overlap with neighboring female residents. They tend to have core areas, which are more exclusive, at least for most of the time. Home ranges of both males and females are not stable. The shift or alteration of a home range by one animal is correlated with a shift of another.
Shifts from less suitable habitat to better ones are made by animals that are already resident.
White tiger
New animals become residents only as vacancies occur when a former resident moves out or dies. There are more places for resident females than for resident males. One of the resident females left her territory to one of her female offspring and took over an adjoining area by displacing another female; and a displaced female managed to re-establish herself in a neighboring territory made vacant by the death of the resident. Of 11 resident females, 7 were still alive at the end of the study period, 2 disappeared after losing their territories to rivals, and 2 died.
The initial loss of two resident males and subsequent take over of their home ranges by new males caused social instability for two years. Of 4 resident males, 1 was still alive and 3 were displaced by rivals. Five litters of cubs were killed by infanticide, 2 litters died because they were too young to fend for themselves when their mothers died. One juvenile tiger was presumed dead after being photographed with severe injuries from a deer snare.
The remaining young lived long enough to reach dispersal age, 2 of them becoming residents in the study area. The tiger is a carnivore. It prefers hunting large ungulates such as chital , sambar , gaur , and to a lesser extent also barasingha , water buffalo , nilgai , serow and takin. Among the medium-sized prey species it frequently kills wild boar , and occasionally hog deer , muntjac and grey langur. Small prey species such as porcupine , hares and peafowl form a very small part in its diet. Because of the encroachment of humans into tiger habitat, it also preys on domestic livestock.
They rarely attack adult Indian elephant and Indian rhinoceros , but such extraordinarily rare events have been recorded. The prey species included chital, sambar, wild pig and gaur. Gaur remains were found in In most cases, tigers approach their victim from the side or behind from as close a distance as possible and grasp the prey's throat to kill it.
Then they drag the carcass into cover, occasionally over several hundred meters, to consume it. The nature of the tiger's hunting method and prey availability results in a "feast or famine" feeding style: The tiger in India has no definite mating and birth seasons. Most young are born in December and April. Males reach maturity at 4—5 years of age, and females at 3—4 years.
A Bengal comes into heat at intervals of about 3—9 weeks, and is receptive for 3—6 days. After a gestation period of — days, 1—4 cubs are born in a shelter situated in tall grass, thick bush or in caves. Their eyes and ears are closed. Their milk teeth start to erupt at about 2—3 weeks after birth, and are slowly replaced by permanent dentition from 8. They suckle for 3—6 months, and begin to eat small amounts of solid food at about 2 months of age. At this time, they follow their mother on her hunting expeditions and begin to take part in hunting at 5—6 months of age.
At the age of 2—3 years, they slowly start to separate from the family group and become transient — looking out for an area, where they can establish their own territory. Young males move further away from their mother's territory than young females. Once the family group has split, the mother comes into heat again. Bengal tigers occasionally hunt and kill predators such as Indian leopard , Indian wolf , Indian jackal , fox , mugger crocodile , Asiatic black bear , sloth bear , and dhole.
Over the past century tiger numbers have fallen dramatically, with a decreasing population trend. None of the Tiger Conservation Landscapes within the Bengal tiger range is large enough to support an effective population size of individuals. Habitat losses and the extremely large-scale incidences of poaching are serious threats to the species' survival.
A voluntary if controversial resettlement is underway with the aid of the Karnataka Tiger Conservation Project led by K.
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Ullas Karanth of the Wildlife Conservation Society. In the past, evidence showed that humans and tigers cannot co-exist. The most significant immediate threat to the existence of wild tiger populations is the illegal trade in poached skins and body parts between India, Nepal and China. The governments of these countries have failed to implement adequate enforcement response, and wildlife crime remained a low priority in terms of political commitment and investment for years.
There are well-organised gangs of professional poachers, who move from place to place and set up camp in vulnerable areas. Skins are rough-cured in the field and handed over to dealers, who send them for further treatment to Indian tanning centres. Buyers choose the skins from dealers or tanneries and smuggle them through a complex interlinking network to markets outside India, mainly in China.
Other factors contributing to their loss are urbanization and revenge killing. Farmers blame tigers for killing cattle and shoot them. Their skins and body parts may however become a part of the illegal trade. Each group of people has different motives for killing tigers, ranging from profit, excitement to safety concerns. All groups have access to the commercial trade in body parts. The illicit demand for bones and body parts from wild tigers for use in Traditional Chinese medicine is the reason for the unrelenting poaching pressure on tigers on the Indian subcontinent.
For at least a thousand years, tiger bones have been an ingredient in traditional medicines that are prescribed as a muscle strengthener and treatment for rheumatism and body pain. Between and , the Wildlife Protection Society of India has documented cases of tigers killed in India, which is just a fraction of the actual poaching and trade in tiger parts during those years.
In , India's Sariska Tiger Reserve lost all of its 26 tigers, mostly to poaching. One of the arrested persons was the biggest buyer of tiger parts in India who used to sell them off to the Chinese traditional medicinal market, using women from a nomadic tribe as couriers. In November , two tigers were found dead in Maharashtra: The Indian subcontinent has served as a stage for intense human and tiger confrontations. The region affording habitat where tigers have achieved their highest densities is also one which has housed one of the most concentrated and rapidly expanding human populations.
At the beginning of the 19th century tigers were so numerous it seemed to be a question as to whether man or tiger would survive. It became the official policy to encourage the killing of tigers as rapidly as possible, rewards being paid for their destruction in many localities. The United Provinces supported large numbers of tigers in the submontane Terai region, where man-eating had been uncommon. In the latter half of the 19th century, marauding tigers began to take a toll of human life. These animals were pushed into marginal habitat, where tigers had formerly not been known, or where they existed only in very low density, by an expanding population of more vigorous animals that occupied the prime habitat in the lowlands, where there was high prey density and good habitat for reproduction.
The dispersers had nowhere else to go, since the prime habitat was bordered in the south by cultivation. They are thought to have followed back the herds of domestic livestock that wintered in the plains when they returned to the hills in the spring, and then being left without prey when the herds dispersed back to their respective villages.
These tigers were the old, the young and the disabled. All suffered from some disability, mainly caused either by gunshot wounds or porcupine quills. These man-eaters have been grouped into the confirmed or dedicated ones who go hunting especially for human prey; and the opportunistic ones, who do not search for humans but will, if they encounter a man, attack, kill and devour him.
In areas where opportunistic man-eaters were found, the killing of humans was correlated with their availability, most victims being claimed during the honey gathering season. The number of tiger attacks on humans may be higher outside suitable areas for tigers, where numerous humans are present but which contain little wild prey for tigers. Most people were attacked in the mornings while collecting fuel wood, timber, or other raw materials, or while fishing.
In Nepal, the incidence of man-eating tigers has been only sporadic. In Chitwan National Park no cases were recorded before In the following few years, 13 people have been killed and eaten in the park and its environs. In the majority of cases, man-eating appeared to have been related to an intra-specific competition among male tigers. In December , a tiger was shot by the Kerala Forest Department on a coffee plantation on the fringes of the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary.
Chief Wildlife Warden of Kerala ordered the hunt for the animal after mass protests erupted as the tiger had been carrying away livestock. The Forest Department had constituted a special task force to capture the animal with the assistance of a member Special Tiger Protection Force and two trained elephants from the Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Karnataka. The goals are to manage tigers as a single metapopulation , the dispersal of which between core refuges can help maintain genetic, demographic, and ecological integrity, and to ensure that species and habitat conservation becomes mainstreamed into the rural development agenda.
In Nepal a community-based tourism model has been developed with a strong emphasis on sharing benefits with local people and on the regeneration of degraded forests. The approach has been successful in reducing poaching, restoring habitats, and creating a local constituency for conservation. WWF partnered with Leonardo DiCaprio to form a global campaign, "Save Tigers Now", with the ambitious goal of building political, financial and public support to double the wild tiger population by In , Project Tiger was launched aiming at ensuring a viable tiger population in the country and preserving areas of biological importance as a natural heritage for the people.
The project's task force visualised these tiger reserves as breeding nuclei, from which surplus animals would disperse to adjacent forests. The selection of areas for the reserves represented as close as possible the diversity of ecosystems across the tiger's distribution in the country. Funds and commitment were mustered to support the intensive program of habitat protection and rehabilitation under the project. More than tigers were estimated to inhabit the reserves by Through this initiative the population decline was reversed initially, but has resumed in recent years; India's tiger population decreased from 3, in the s to just over 1, from to The Indian Wildlife Protection Act of enables government agencies to take strict measures so as to ensure the conservation of the Bengal tigers.
The government's first tiger census, conducted under the Project Tiger initiative begun in , counted 1, tigers in the country that year. Using that methodology, the government observed a steady population increase, reaching 3, tigers in However, the use of more reliable and independent censusing technology including camera traps for the — all-India census has shown that the numbers were in fact less than half than originally claimed by the Forest Department.
Following the revelation that only 1, Bengal tigers existed in the wild in India, down from 3, in , the Indian government set up eight new tiger reserves. India has to decide whether it wants to keep the tiger or not. It has to decide if it is worthwhile to keep its National Symbol, its icon, representing wildlife. It has to decide if it wants to keep its natural heritage for future generations, a heritage more important than the cultural one, whether we speak of its temples, the Taj Mahal, or others, because once destroyed it cannot be replaced.
In January , the Government of India launched a dedicated anti-poaching force composed of experts from Indian police, forest officials and various other environmental agencies. Since no lion has been transferred from Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh so far, it may be used as a sanctuary for the tiger instead. WildTeam is working with local communities and the Bangladesh Forest Department to reduce human-tiger conflict in the Bangladesh Sundarbans.
For over years people, tigers, and livestock have been injured and killed in the conflict; in recent decades up to 50 people, 80 livestock, and 3 tigers have been killed in a year. Now, through WildTeam's work, there is a boat-based Tiger Response team that provides first aid, transport, and body retrieval support for people being killed in the forest by tigers.
WildTeam has also set up 49 volunteer Village Response Teams that are trained to save tigers that have strayed into the village areas and would be otherwise killed.
To monitor the conflict and assess the effectiveness of actions, WildTeam have also set up a human-tiger conflict data collection and reporting system. Bengal tigers have been captive bred since and widely crossed with other tiger subspecies. The International Tiger Studbook lists the global captive population of Bengal tigers at individuals that are all kept in Indian zoos, except for one female in North America. Completion of the Indian Bengal Tiger Studbook is a necessary prerequisite to establishing a captive management program for tigers in India.
Billy Arjan Singh sent hair samples of tigers from the national park to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad where the samples were analysed using mitochondrial sequence analysis. Results revealed that the tigers in question had an Indian tiger mitochondrial haplotype indicating that their mother was an Indian tiger. In , the Bengal tiger re-wilding project Tiger Canyons was started by John Varty , who together with the zoologist Dave Salmoni trained captive-bred tiger cubs how to stalk, hunt, associate hunting with food and regain their predatory instincts.
They claimed that once the tigers proved that they can sustain themselves in the wild, they would be released into a free-range sanctuary of South Africa to fend for themselves.
The project has received controversy after accusations by their investors and conservationists of manipulating the behaviour of the tigers for the purpose of a film production, Living with Tigers , with the tigers believed to be unable to hunt. The four tigers involved in this project have been confirmed to be crossbred Siberian—Bengal tigers, which should neither be used for breeding nor being released into the Karoo. Tigers that are not genetically pure will not be able to participate in the tiger Species Survival Plan , as they are not used for breeding, and are not allowed to be released into the wild.
In October , 18 Bengal tigers were among the exotic animals shot by the local sheriff's department after the Ohio exotic animal release.
White Bengal Tiger: WhoZoo
The tiger is one of the animals displayed on the Pashupati seal of the Indus Valley Civilisation. The tiger crest is the emblem on the Chola coins. The seals of several Chola copper coins show the tiger, the Pandya emblem fish and the Chera emblem bow, indicating that the Cholas had achieved political supremacy over the latter two dynasties. Gold coins found in Kavilayadavalli in the Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh have motifs of the tiger, bow and some indistinct marks. Today, the tiger is the national animal of India.
Bangladeshi banknotes feature a tiger. The political party Muslim League of Pakistan uses the tiger as its election symbol. Tipu Sultan , who ruled Mysore in late 18th-century India, was also a great admirer of the animal. The famed 18th-century automaton , Tipu's Tiger was also created for him.
It has been celebrated in Hindu consciousness from time immemorial as the divine vehicle of the Goddess of Power, Durga or Shakti. The animal has been chosen by the Reserve Bank of India as its emblem and Indian currency notes carry its portrait. The Bengal tiger has continuously been used in various cultural fronts such as national symbolism, logo, sports, films and literature and has also been used as nicknames for famous personalities.
Some of them are mentioned below:. Notable Bengal tigers include the man-eating Tiger of Segur , [] Tigers of Chowgarh , [] Tiger of Mundachipallam , [] Chuka man-eating tiger and Thak man-eater. Apart from the above-mentioned uses of the Bengal tiger in culture, the fight between a tiger and a lion has, for a long time, been a popular topic of discussion by hunters, naturalists, artists, and poets, and continue to inspire the popular imagination to the present-day.
The Seringapatam medal depicted the British lion overcoming a prostrate tiger, the tiger being the dynastic symbol of Tipu Sultan's line. This was symbolic of the British domination in India. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses of "Bengal tiger" and related terms, see Bengal tiger disambiguation. For other uses of 'Royal Bengal tiger' and related terms, see Royal Bengal tiger disambiguation.
Facial close up of Sultan, a male in Ranthambore National Park. A tiger attacking a Sambar deer in Ranthambore. Male tiger and mugger crocodile at Rajbaugh, Ranthambhore. The Pashupati seal with tiger to right of the seated divine figure Pashupati. Archived from the original PDF on 14 May Retrieved 2 February Status of tigers, co-predators and prey in India, National Tiger Conservation Authority, Govt. Archived from the original PDF on Global Tiger Initiative Secretariat. Archived from the original PDF on 26 August National Trust for Nature Conservation.
Tiger Action Plan for Bhutan — World Wide Fund For Nature. Archived from the original on 4 March Retrieved 29 November Volume II, Part 2. Carnivora Hyaenas and Cats ]. Smithsonian Institution and the National Science Foundation. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Tiger Conservation in Human-Dominated Landscapes. Archived from the original on 23 April The Face of the Tiger.
Archived from the original on 10 March Wild Cats of the World 1st. University of Chicago Press. The Journal of Wildlife Management. Who's king of the beasts? Historical and contemporary data on the body weight of wild and captive Amur tigers in comparison with other subspecies" PDF.
White Bengal Tiger
Tigers in Sikhote-Alin Zapovednik: Jungle trails in northern India: Metheun and Company Limited. Archived from the original on Retrieved 14 August Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon. Thacker, Spink and Co.