White Tigers

A detailed Summary of White Tigers

White tigers are an endangered species and it is said that less than a dozen have been seen in India in about a hundred years. In fact no sightings have been reported since 1951. This may be caused by the fact that the Royal Bengal tiger population has dropped from 40,000 to 1,800 in the past ten years and as few as one in every 10,000 tigers is white (www.cranes.org/whitetiger).

White tigers are neither albinos nor a special species. They differ from the normally colored tigers by having blue eyes, a pink nose, and creamy white fur with black stripes. If they were albinos they would have pink eyes and a lighter nose color. A tigers stripes are just like human fingerprints meaning that no two tigers have the same pattern of stripes. White tigers aren't necessarily born from other white tigers. White tigers get their color by a double recessive allele. A Bengal tiger with two normal alleles or one normal and one white allele is colored orange. Only a double dose of the mutant allele results in white tigers (www.cranes.org/whitetiger). In fact it is even normal to find normal colored cubs in a litter of white tigers (www.5tigers.org.com).

The scientific name for a tiger is Panthera Tigris Tigris. It was initially feli

The white tiger has long been the focus of human fear and respect for years because of its powerful muscular body, loud roar, and frightening snarl revealing large, sharp teeth. Tigers spend all of their time alone which is very unusual (Thapar,115). Each tiger has its own territory, which it marks by scratching the barks of trees, spraying urine, and leaving piles of feces (Cavendish,696). Males are particularly aggressive toward other males and in some cases fights result in death of the weaker tiger. The territories may contain two or three female tigers but in most cases the area extends to over 40 square miles (DuTemple,15).

Once tigers have reached three or fours years old they are old enough to breed. Tigers breed every two to three years and the female is the one that goes looking for a mate (McClung,212). The females will go around leaving their scents on bushes or rocks and wait for interested males to come. When the cubs are born, however, the male and female tigers go their separate ways and the female is left with the responsibility of raising the cubs. The average time that tigers are pregnant is usually about 108 days before the cubs are born (www.noahsays.com). The female usually has litters of about three to four cubs in a special den that she has chosen where she feels the cubs will be safe. The cubs are blind at first and weigh about 2.5 pounds and they rely on their mother for everything (www.noahsays.com). The hardest thing for the mother to do is to keep the cubs safe as she goes off hunting. When the cubs are small she'll probably hide them in a cave or in-between small crevices in the rocks where they cannot be seen. When the cubs get bigger then the mother usually hides them in clumps of long grass until she return from hunting (Cavendish,697). Large snakes such as pythons may sneak up on the cubs and crush them to death and then swallow them. Leopards, wild dogs, and hyenas are also on the prowl so the mother has to hurry back as soon as possible (Tharpar,199). Many of the cubs do become prey before they are old enough to protect themselves and only about two cubs will get a chance to grow into fully grown tigers (Morris,92). The cubs drink their mothers milk until they are five to six weeks old and when they get a little bigger the mother usually vomits up some of her food to feed to her cubs. It is very important to keep the cubs fur clean so the mother spends a lot of time doing this to keep them healthy. The mother also has to spend a great deal o

Some common words found in the essay are:
McClung150 Tigers, Royal Bengal, Bandipur Forest, Cavendish696 Tigers, Tigris Tigris, DuTemple15 Tigers, Cavendish696 Males, Morris88 Tigers, Southeast Asia, , white tigers, 10/13/99 10/13/99, bigger mother usually, mother usually, tiger population, thapar200 cubs, bigger mother, cubs born, sharp teeth, 10/13/99 10/13/99 10/13/99, bengal tiger, morris87 tiger,

Approximate Word count = 1698
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science