I agree on that with you Baltimore!
Oh Susanne, why did you start on tigers, haha.
This is one of my fields of expertise, as it is my absolute favourite animal...
Yes, white tigers are a mutation, and from the Bengal or King-Tiger to be exactly.
All of the white tigers in the world today, originate from one completely white tiger, named Mohan, that came from one of the Maharadjahs of India, who had it in his collection.
It was his second one, that he found in the wild in India in that particular time.
He was sent to the USA to breed more white tigers.
They quickly found out, that these white tigers don't have very strong genes at all, specially not those who are completely white.
They tried to bring in more fresh blood by letting Mohan breed with normal coloured Bengal tigers.
This way they found out, that striped white tigers are stronger then the completely white ones.
But the control over this breeding programm was very bad later on, and to make a long story short, there were lots of Siberian tigers bred in the blood lines, so not one of the white tigers in the world today is pure Bengal tiger anymore.
The genes of Mohan are completely lost...
So the white tigers today are not even a real species or sub-species, they are a bred race of animal, just like most of the dogbreeds and so on, and just for human pleasure indeed...
And i don't even speak from those tigers, that are kept in behind-quarters of zoo's and breeders, that look really awfull, because of the inbreeding.
They do really look like tigers with a Down-syndrom...
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Shocking enough?
By the way, we do have 2 species of tigers as they found out shortly ago by doing research on their genes.
The subspecies Kaspian(extinct), Bengal, South-East Asian-, South Chinese and Siberian are one species.
The other one is the Malaysian or Corbetti tiger(here they found the different genes first), with the sub-species Sumatra-, Java-(extinct) and Bali-tiger(extinct).
When you look at the colours of the modern tiger, you really like to see him in forest- or jungle-area's.
But they originate from the northern parts of Asia actually, and migrated downwards in Asia.
Because of this, you would have aspected, that the tigers would have a more pale or lighter furr, but they don't, not even in Siberia today, although they are somewhat lighter.
That is another fact about tigers...
How more to the south, how darker the colour, how shorter the furr, and how tighter the stripes are together in general.
Talking about the stripes, the are no stripes at all, haha, they are stretched rosettes, like on spotted cats actually...
Sometimes you can see that on some sub-species, specially on the South-China tiger, but not for log anymore i guess, there are maximum 20 left there...
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]One of the last South-China tigers...
The only thing i never understood about tigers, is why they never migrated to the America's, as most of the big Eurasian species did over the Siberia-Alaska landbridge in the far past, as they lived there, and still today...
Only think about the bison, wolf, red deer, lynx, brown bear, (from which the polar-bear originates too, about 10.000 years ago), red fox, badger and many more species...
By the way, white tigers do look beautifull and awesome, but which colour wouldn't look good on this animal?
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]A full-grown male white lion does look fantastic too, but it is a resessive gene in their blood-lines too, and has no chance to survive in the wild for a long time normally.
So they should not been alive anymore today!
And specially not just for the fun and joy of people!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]This is a complete different story with the king-cheetah and black spotted cats, as they can survive perfectly in nature, because their colours are giving still good camouflage in their habitats...
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]So at the end, better to buy models of those special animals that mother nature gives us from time to time, instead of breeding the real ones!
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Her eyes are beautiful.
ing they are ok i think, so i have some of them too! 
