11 December 2008

Captive White Tiger Inbreeding.


I stumbled across this quite by accident, but it appears as though the people who breed white tigers for entertainment have to resort to a lot of inbreeding because they are so rare. Along with this, they are now pretending that white tigers are a distinct species from other tigers, are so are worthy of these breeding efforts. In reality, white tigers just have different alleles for color genes, and so are no different a species than two siblings that have different colored eyes. This is the sort of breeding that they say Hitler endorsed, blonde haired and blue eyed. IN ANY CASE, this inbreeding results in horrible mutations, and apparently many of the offspring are disposed of. This article shows pictures of poor Kenny, who has facial deformities that we are very unused to seeing in wild animals. It is quite startling. He cannot close his mouth because of his teeth and is said to be mentally disabled.

I realize the article is a little alarmist. I'm not sure if its all entirely accurate, but it is a not a stretch of the imagination to think that white tigers are bred for entertainment purposes and that such inbreeding may result in deformities. People do sad things to animals.

1 comment:

Jenny said...

How sad. I was watching Planet in Peril on CNN last night, and it was so horrifying. We are so cocooned here in the US regarding the sad shape many parts of the world are in. The oil companies and other industries are destroying habitats all over the planet. For example, in the beautiful mountains of Peru, children are being poisoned by lead due to mining. This is just one example. And of course, the wildlife is being poisoned as well due to that same mining. You would think the mountains in Peru are a beautiful, unsullied habitat, but not so. Anyway, this tiger is just another example of human greed and stupidity.