CHENNAI: The Arignar Anna Zoological Park in Vandalur witnessed the birth of three special tiger cubs on Thursday. The cubs were the latest to join the seven white tigers already interned at the zoo.
A press release from the zoo said that officials had placed the mother and her cubs under special care and were closely monitoring their condition.
The three little white tigers are the third litter delivered of in three years by the mother, eightyearold tigress Anu. The latest litter was sired by nineyear old Bhishma. Both parents are white tigers, which automatically means any cubs they have together would be white. They were brought to the Vandalur zoo in 2006 from the National Zoological Park in Delhi, as part of an animal exchange programme.
Since her delivery, Anu has been placed on a diet of 7 kg beef, 150 gm of liver and 4 kg of chicken. The cubs are currently suckling and are expected to shift to meat in three months time.
The white tiger breeding programme in India now has over 100 of the specimens in zoos across the country. Widely misconceived in popular perception as 'albino tigers', the white tigers are in fact genetically different from the regular orange tigers, though they are of the same species. While their novelty value around the world rises from this mutation, it also results in a weakened immune system, according to experts.
White tigers are larger than their orange cousins, both at birth and adulthood. This has led to the view that their role in the gene pool could be to retain the size genes in the event of a loss of the same among the general tiger population.