Historical quotations are credited and are in the public domain. Original text is licensed under the GFDL. I am grateful to Paul McCarthy and Jerry Blackman for researching and providing extensive material, information and corrections on white tigers and for genealogies.

“White gene” vs “Inhibitor gene.”
Although these pages refer to “white genes,” white tigers have the genes for normal orange colours, but those genes are switched off by a recessive “inhibitor gene.” When a tiger inherits 2 copies of the inhibitor gene, the normal orange colour is suppressed. In general parlance, it’s simply easier to refer to “white genes.”

ALLEGED WHITE AMUR (SIBERIAN) TIGERS

An alleged third strain of white tigers occurred at the Como Zoo in Minnesota where two Amur (Siberian) tigers who were brothers, both born at Como Zoo, supposedly carried the white gene. A lot of digging around indicates that their white descendents are part-Bengal and that the white gene was introduced into the line by Susie, a Bengal tigress (owned by Clyde Beatty). The two Amur brothers had no Bengal ancestry and their parents, a brother and sister who were both registered Amur tigers, had been captured in the wild (though elsewhere, one is described as a Siberian/Bengal cross). Some of the brothers' allegedly purebred Amur descendants are white. One of these Amur brothers (Kubla) was bred to a Bengal tigress (Susie) at Sioux Falls Zoo, South Dakota. Kubla was the grandfather of Tony, a founder of many American white tiger lineages. At the Great Plains Zoo, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Kubla was also mated to an Amur tigress named Katrina who was born at Rotterdam Zoo and joined Kubla and Susie in Sioux Falls after passing through the hands of two other American zoos. Kubla and Katrina had two full-bred Amur daughters.

Susie - Matriarch of a White Tiger Line

As a brief summary, Susie’s ancestry is obscure. If Susie was born in a zoo there should be a record of this in the International Zoo Yearbook, but I would need to know which zoo (possibly Sarasota) and whether she had a different name at the zoo that bred or imported her. Without records available, much of the information comes from verbal sources from people who are no longer alive. The only certain fact is that she came from the Sioux Falls Zoo in South Dakota (and possibly from an unidentified West Coast zoo before that). Baron Julius von Uhl claimed to have purchased “an imported Bengal tigress” named Susie along with the Siberian-cross tiger Kubla from the Sioux Falls Zoo in South Dakota. Roychoudhury thought Susie was bred from wild-caught parents (Susie’s mate, rather than Susie, was bred from from wild caught parents.) Sioux Falls Zoo denied having any record of Susie - was this poor record-keeping by the Zoo or did she have a different name with them? Rhys Walkley obtained information about Susie from the Great Plains Zoo in South Dakota and sent the information to Sioux Falls Zoo. Von Uhl claimed that Sheba was three quarters Siberian and one quarter Bengal, and that Raja was half and half which, if true, would make Susie half Siberian! Susie was bred extensively, resulting in 13-14 cubs, before being paired with the Bengal tiger that killed her.

The argument that Sioux Falls tigers were not descended from Mohan, or closely related to him, is that the stripeless white and golden tabby tigers all came out of that lineage, as did so many cross eyed tigers. Bristol Zoo, which had tigers from the Rewa strain, had no cross eyed tigers and no stripeless white tigers. All the Rewa strain were uniform in type with dark stripes. The other alternative would be if Susie had been born in India at Ahmedabad Zoo and imported into the USA. If this isn’t the case then Susie’s parents carried white and stripeless traits from other Indian imports and these traits only showed up because she was bred to into the white tiger gene pool.

The Bengal/Amur matings resulted in at least 12 live cubs. Of these, a brother and sister pair (Raja [also spelled Radja] and Sheba II) were sold to one individual while 5 cubs (Ural, Prince, Sabre, Sheba III, and Begum) were sold to another individual. The new owners each bred brother to sister; white cubs resulted in both cases. Buck, the tiger who bred with his daughter Bonnie and produced a white cub at the Racine Zoo around 1980 may also have been one of Susie’s cubs. One of Susie's cubs went to a zoo in Japan. Three went to the Hawthorn Circus Corp. in Grayslake, Illinois and one or both of the two males may have been fathering white tiger cubs before being castrated because they fought so much. Susie was killed by a Bengal tiger she was paired with for breeding. Kubla was her only documented mate, any previous offspring are unknown.

Chart 3.1: Raja and Sheba II's Offspring (large image, opens in new window)

The other Amur brother was then bred to his Bengal/Amur hybrid niece, Sheba III, while in the Hawthorn Circus. Sheba III produced white cubs suggesting that her pure Amur uncle carried the white gene. However, the majority of the litters sired by her Amur uncle did not include white cubs, which suggests that those white genes actually came from her demi-Bengal brother. Raja and Sheba II were bought by Baron von Uhl and later produced at least 2 more white cubs while at the Henry Doorly Zoo, Omaha. Raja and Sheba II produced two white cubs in Baltimore in 1976. The New York Times wrote: "Rare Tigers Born At Fair. Middle River Maryland, June 27, 1976: "An 8 year old Siberian tiger named Sheba gave birth today to two rare white cubs at the Baltimore County fair. The tigress is owned by Julius Von Uhl who uses her in an animal act. A spokesman for the National Zoo in Washington said that only 36 white tigers are known to exist." However, Von Uhl claims all his cubs were born in Indiana and Georgia. The Baron Julius Von Uhl Circus existed as recently as 1995, but Von Uhl became a horse trainer at the Chicago-based "The Noble Horse" having cut ties with white tigers. He claimed to have owned only 2 white tigers, Tony and a white female cub that didn't survive and that he didn't purchase any from Robert Baudy, or sell any to a Swedish Zoo. Von Uhl who may have erroneously believed that white tigers were an inevitable result of line-breeding (meaning inbreeding).

Alan Shoemaker, Columbia, South Carolina, (Riverbanks Zoo, studbook keeper for the leopard, and part of the IUCN Cat Specialty Group) believes there are pure Amur white tigers in captivity today. Robert Baudy claimed that his white tigers are of pure Amur stock. Robert Baudy apparently realised that his Amur tigers had white genes after one sold to Marwell Zoo developed white spots (confirmed by Marwell Zoo, but likely to be vitiligo). Baudy sold a pair of white, supposedly pure Amur, tigers, Raisa and Gorby, to the Beauval Zoo in France and some of Raisa and Gorby's offspring went to a Dutch zoo and some to Colchester Zoo, England. For details of Baudy's tigers and his breeding activities see White Tiger Breeders: Robert Baudy, Josip Marcan. In brief, Baudy admitted that white Siberian cub Boris was supposedly the product of "generations of "cross breeding and line-breeding" which means his colour must have originated from a white Bengal, folowed by extensive crossing of each generation to pure Siberian tigers. Bill Zeigler, curator for Miami Metrozoo, said "if both Boris' parents are pure Siberian, then the tiger may indeed be one of a kind, but if it has any Bengal in it at all, it would be no more rare than ours."

The rather shaggy white tigers at Tigerhomes (USA) are also described as Siberian (Amur) white tigers. I also have personal correspondence relating to a pair of privately owned Amur tigers that produced a stillborn white cub. Baudy's Amur stock was almost certainly tainted with Bengal genes.

In 1979, TH Reed asked Robert Baudy to breed Rewati (daughter of Ramana and Mohini) with one of his tigers, but it appears that no cubs resulted.

Kubla also has living descendants that are registered as purebred Amur tigers though it is possible that three-quarter Amur tigers sold through Hunts Brothers International Animal Exchange, in Ferndale, Michigan, might have been mistakenly for pure Amur tigers, resulting in the white gene entering Amur lines in zoos. The Amur tiger is sometimes mistakenly called the "White Siberian Tiger".

There were allegedly white Siberian tigers owned by Pat Anthony at Jungleland in Thousand Oaks, California in 1972 or 1973 (the supposed source of von Uhls part-Siberian tigers – either Ural or Genghis did spend time at Jungleland), however Jungleland (a lion farm) closed to the public in 1969. Jungleland still existed, albeit not as a public attraction, in 1974 (Jan. 7th, 1974 page 4 of The Circus Report: "John Cuneo is wintering at the Great Western Livestock Exposition in Los Angeles CA and not at Thousand Oaks as was previously reported.") According to Wade Burck, when the Hawthorn Circus went back to Mexico in 1977, Tony was left behind at Thousand Oaks (Jungleland) instead of at Cincinnati Zoo. It’s possible Ika, Ari, and Frosty might also have been left there. It might have been used that year as a holding area by Hunts Bros. Although Ivan Henry said that Pat Anthony had two white tigers at Jungleland in 1972 or 1973, perhaps he actually saw Tony (and maybe other Hawthorn tigers) there in 1976.

It was also alleged that am "amateur" in Polack Bros Circus had two white tigers in 1973 or 1974, but these are not mentioned in the authoritative “The Circus report,” however there are adverts for Henry Thomas "America's youngest tiger trainer" with 10 Bengal and Siberian tigers (another advert says "Royal Bengal tigers") andthis might be the "amateur" Ivan Henry claimed had two white tigers in the Polack Bros Circus in 1973.

The Orlando Sentinel, 16th July, 1978 (p13) claimed that there was a baby white Siberian tiger at the West Berlin Zoo. If this was a Siberian (rather than mixed blood), this would have been a case of “fever coat” where the pigment had not properly developed due to high temperature in the womb.

UNKNOWN WHITE TIGER LINEAGES

In 1980 a white tiger cub was born at the Racine Zoo in Wisconsin from an accidental father/daughter mating, though the cub was apparently killed by the father. The mother was later used to breed more white cubs. They were not known to have carried the white gene and it is uncertain how they relate to the other known white lineages. The same is true of the white tigers in the Asian Circus in India. Everland Zoo (Yongin Farm zoo), Seoul, South Korea, bought white tigers from a private breeder, Betty Young of Arkansas; these are descended from the Racine Zoo (Wisconsin) tigers. Everland Zoo (Yongin Farm Zoo) also have white tigers from Omaha and Cincinnati zoos, and have bred white ligers (lion/tiger hybrids) possibly from white tigers and leucistic lionesses. Young also acquired white tigers from Cincinnati Zoo.

WHITE TIGER CUBS THAT CHANGE COLOUR

There are records of cubs that are born white but later change to a normal orange colour. This phenomenon is known as “fever coat” and is due to conditions in the womb preventing melanin from being properly deposited in the hairs of the foetus. It is well documented in domestic cats and has been observed in captive jaguars and leopards. It most often occurs when the mother is ill or stressed – which is likely to be the case in some captive tigers – and is related to the temperature in the womb. Why so few reports of white cubs changing colour? If the cubs were born sickly and died before their first moult then they would have been recorded as “white tigers.”

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