BHUBANEWAR: A litter of five cubs, including a white one, has brought cheer to Nandankanan Zoological Park. It is for the first time in 11 years that a normal Royal Bengal Tiger (RBT) pair has given birth to a white cub. The zoo officials are ecstatic but keeping their fingers crossed hoping that the cubs survive. Currently, the Zoo has 24 tigers, 10 of them white. Since the large cats are mostly inbred, the zoo has been carefully choosing the pairs basing on their compatibility. It was in 1980 that Nandankanan first recorded the first-ever normal pair giving birth to white cubs. Deepak and Ganga, the RBT pair, had, in fact, given litter five times to the zoo, thrice pure normal and twice pure white. It was a record of sorts for the animal park. After that it took the zoo 17 years to repeat the phenomenon. In 1997, a normal pair, Sagar and Laxmipriya, gave birth to a white litter. The trend was repeated in 1998 and 2000. Once the infamous tiger deaths occurred in the zoo in 2000, an unofficial ban on breeding was imposed by the Central Zoo Authority and a large population was sent out to other zoos as part of exchange programmes. Between 2002 and 2004, no breeding took place at all but then it was initiated again to keep the profile of the stock healthy. In fact, the zoo uses a software that is offered to members of World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) to find out a probable genetic health of inbred cats. “We have kept a number of them in isolation so as to minimise impact of inbreeding but we also have to allow mating upon their maturity. Sara, a wild tigress from Madhya Pradesh, was also paired with a zoo born tiger,” Director of Nandankanan Zoo Sudarshan Panda said. Priyanka and Roshan, parents of the litter, also mated for the first time. While Priyanka, 11, was born to a white father, Roshan’s mother was white.
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