GUWAHATI: Not one but at least four golden tigers have been spotted at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam.
Last Saturday, there was a frenzy among social media users after a photo of the golden tiger went viral. However, the forest officials in Assam are not ecstatic.
The authorities at the Kaziranga National Park on Tuesday said the finding of the unique individuals was not a cause for celebration “but an indication for us to start pondering about better connectivity among the fragmented populations of tigers to prevent one of the serious problems of population decline, i.e. inbreeding”.
They said the colour aberration was due to biological reasons. “The biological reasons for colour aberration may be due to excessive inbreeding caused by habitat destruction and loss of connectivity. The recessive genes are showing up due to inbreeding within a fragmented population,” said Rabindra Sharma, a research officer, Kaziranga Tiger Reserve.
He said a recent study by the Cardiff University and the National Centre for Biological Sciences found that 93% of the tiger DNA variants from the British period were no longer present in the current tiger population.
A tigress with lighter yellowish skin and lighter black stripes with more whitish expressions on abdominal and facial regions was photo-captured in 2014 for the first time in Kaziranga during an all India tiger monitoring exercise.
Sharma said she was also camera trapped in 2015. In 2016, she was camera-trapped with one more tiger. The conclusion could not be drawn about the other individual whether it was her cub or a mate due to the low quality of the image. She was again camera-trapped in 2017. This year, she might have crossed the minimum age of 4-5 years, the research officer said.
“Generally at three to four years, a female gets sexual maturity and gives birth. Therefore, she might have given birth or ready to give birth to new babies. It will be very interesting to observe whether her faulty gene will be carried to her successors or not! We found some serious injury marks on her body. Someone, maybe another tiger, has mauled her nose and left forelimb badly. Fortunately, she has recovered,” Sharma added.