"While the white or golden tabby coloration of these animals may be pretty, what the zoos won't tell you is that, in reality, it's a deadly genetic mutation. They are not a subspecies, and are not albino.

Instead, the white coat and pretty pale eyes can be traced back to a single breeding founder named Mohan, captured in the jungles of India as a cub during the early 1950s. He was raised in captivity and eventually bred to another captive female in hopes of producing more white cubs. It didn't happen; all of Mohan's offspring were normal orange tigers.

But once those offspring reached sexual maturity, Mohan was bred to one of his own daughters. This time, the litter produced white offspring. It was now apparent that the only way to achieve the white coat was to inbreed, since the gene was double-recessive and could only be created if both parents had it.

Mohan eventually produced several more white cubs through further inbreeding, and many of those cubs were sent overseas as gifts to various zoos and safari parks. Many others were merely 'rented out' on what's known as a breeding loan, in order to perpetuate the genetic pigmentation defect in captive tiger populations elsewhere around the globe.

While there are reports of other 'strains' of the white gene coming from sources outside of the Mohan family line, none of them have been officially noted.

According to Dr. Ron Tilson, head of the Tiger Species Survival Plan, there is only a 1 in 10,000 chance of a white tiger being born in a natural mating between two wild tigers, meaning that Mohan was literally a miracle tiger. The chances of a second on being born naturally without any inbreeding involved is undoubtedly slim-to-none.

And even though a white tiger can result from a natural mating in nature, there are many reports of wild tiger mothers attempting to smother their white cubs to death. This is not uncommon of other animals, as well, and probably has something to do with the fact that abnormally-colored offspring generally don't survive as well as their siblings. Given the choice, a mother will favor her normally-pigmented cubs over the abnormal one. This maternal behavior is noted even today in zoos. The Singapore Zoo has taken to raising all of their white tiger cubs by hand for the first few months of their lives to ensure that the tigress will not kill or abandon them.

Other issues with white tigers come from the inbreeding itself. Many suffer from bone deformation, cleft palates, and curvature of the spine, as well as mental retardation and severe stereotyping behaviors. "
By: Mia FryGirl Frost