In a Nicaraguan zoo, a rare white Bengal tiger called Nieve means ‘snow’ in Spanish was born recently. The female cub is being raised by the wife of the zoo director after it was rejected by its mother.
This is the first white Bengal tiger to be born in the Central American country.
Five years ago, her mother, a yellow-and-black Bengal tiger, was rescued from a circus but was unable to provide milk to feed the cub.
Director Eduardo Sacasa said Nieve was born last week, weighing just over two pounds at birth.
White tigers are identified as a genetic anomaly’ by the conservation group WWF, with none known to exist in the wild. Several hundred are in captivity.
According to The Wildcat Sanctuary in Minnesota, which supports and studies felines, white tigers are Bengal tigers whose parents bear a recessive gene. They are not albinos or a genus of their own.
White tigers are inbred by some parks and zoos as white cubs attract more visitors, but this is also at the expense of malformations and other genetic problems, the sanctuary website reports.
The cub’s mother, rescued after the circus abandoned her, had inherited the rare gene from her white grandfather.
Nieve was taken away from her mother, who rejected her, and is being bottle-fed by Marina Arguello, Sacasa’s wife, who helps run the zoo and rescue center for around 700 animals.
“She has not lost her appetite; every three hours she gets the bottle. If not, she screams… also if the milk gets too cold,” said Arguello.
Source: DailyMail