Not One, We Have Four Golden Tigers, Says Kaziranga Park & It's Nothing To Be Celebrated
While social media is still celebrating the spotting of what was being described as the only Golden tiger in India which was recently seen in the Kaziranga National Park in Assam, the Forest officials there have clarified that there are more such majestic big cats in the protected area.?
On Tuesday, KNP issued a statement, in which the photographed golden tiger has been identified as Golden Tiger of Kaziranga KAZI 106-F.?
"Few years back, during 2008 camera trapping, the presence of black tigers was revealed in the jungles of Similipal Tiger Reserve," it said.?
One tigress with lighter yellowish skin with lighter black stripes and more whitish expressions in the abdominal and in the facial region was photo-captured in the year 2014 for the first time in Kaziranga during all India tiger monitoring exercise. She was also camera trapped in the year 2015. In the year 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 low quality of the image.?
She was again camera-trapped in the recent camera trapping of 2017. This year she might have crossed the minimum age of 4-5 years. Generally at the stage of 3 to 4 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!?
According to?Rabindra Sharma, Research Officer, Kaziranga National Park, the skin of tigers is orange-yellow with black stripes and whitish abdominal region. The yellowish background is controlled by a set of'agouti genes' and their alleles and the black colored stripes are controlled by 'tabby genes' and their alleles. Suppression of any of these genes may lead to color variation in tigers.Signaling Protein -ASIP is mainly responsible for location of melanin pigment in mammals.?
Agouti interacts with the pigment cells toproduce yellow to red or brown to black expression. This interaction is responsible for making distinct light and dark bands in the hairs of animals such as the agouti. In other species such as horses, itdetermines what parts of the body are red or black.?
Various forms of colorations have been recorded in tigers in zoos or in a few wild cases. It may be stripeless white, with reduced stripes, lighteryellowish, darker whitish, normal light yellowish, normal, normal deep yellowish, rufous, brownish with dark stripes, brownish without dark stripes, blue-melanistic, or black melanistic.The biological reason of color 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. A recent study done by Cardiff University and NCBS (National Center for Biological Sciences) have found that 93% of thetiger DNA variants from British period are no longer present in the current tiger population.?
While we are celebrating?the golden tiger, KNP officials?say the finding of this unique individual is not a cause for celebration, but an indication for us to start pondering about better connectivity among fragmented populations of tigers to prevent one of the serious problems of population decline i.e. inbreeding.
