White Tigers Essays (1542 words) - Tigers, Fauna Of Asia, Biota

White Tigers Tigers are a wonderful species in their own right. They are elegant and graceful, but at the same time are ready to fight for their right to survive. Today, in a world of destruction and growth, these tigers have tough day to day challenges they must face that are steadily growing worse as our society grows larger. What challenges do these magnifecent animals have to deal with in order to remain a species of elegance and grace and not just another history lesson? Is it possible for these tigers to meet these challenges, to adapt to the rapid changes in their surroundings? Can they overcome these challenges that have been thrown at them, these challenges that are decreasing their survival and slowly pushing their species to extincintion? 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 that the Royal Bengal tiger population has dropped from 40,000 to 1, 800 in the past ten years, and as few as 1 in every 10,000 tigers is white (www.cranes.org/whitetigers.com). 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. Tiger's stripes are just like a human fingerprint, meaning that no two tigers have the same pattern of stripes. White tigers are not usually born from other white tigers. They get their color from double recessive allele. A Bengal tiger with two normal alleles or one normal or white allele is colored orange. Only a double dose of the mutant allele results in white tigers, and you can only imagine how often that happens (www.cranes.org/whitetigers.com). 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 (Thapar, 115). Each Tiger has its own territory, which it marks by scratching the barks off 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. Their territories may contain 3 or 4 females, but in most cases the area extends to over 40 SQ miles (dutemple, 15). Tigers are nocturnal animals and prefer to hunt their food under cover of dense vegetation. They hunt their prey by stalking silently through the trees in a low crouch until it is within 66 ft (mcclung, 107). The tiger then bounds forward, knocking it's victim over with a swipe of it's huge forepaw and pouncing on the victims back as it falls to the ground (cavendish, 696). Tigers never creep up on their prey in the same direction as the wind is blowing, doing this may result in loss of their dinner (morris, 87). Once it has made a kill it then drags the dead carcas under cover before beginning to feed (Morris, 87). As the tiger eats it will make loud growling and snaraling noises to warn off the predetors in the area ( Thapar, 52). If for some reason the tiger has to leave its dinner before it is done eating it will cover the carcas with twigs to ensure it's meal when it returns (Morris, 88). Tigers need to eat 40 pounds of meat a day and will commonly cover up to 12 miles each night in search of prey (McClung, 150). Tigers usually eat deer, young rhino's, baby elephants, domestic animals at near by farms, and occasionaly leapords (Morris, 88). Once in a while, you know when it is in the moods for a snack with a little flavor to it, it will eat a human being. Although this is much less common than you think, tigers are actually very shy and try to steer clear from humans (Morris, 88). Once a tiger has reached 3 to 4 years old, they are old enough to breed. Tigers usually breed every two to three years, and the female is the one that goes looking for her mate (McClung, 212). You see even in the animal kingdom females still have to do all the work to make anything happen. That is not relevent but I thought I would put it in here just for kicks. How the female search's is, she walks around leaving her scents on