White tigers are a mistake; they are a genetic mutation, and
one blogger is arguing that they should just be allowed to die off. Jackson
Landers recently wrote an article for Slate that discussed the morality and
ethicality of continued breeding of white tigers, and he says the world would
be better off without them.
What may at first seem like a heartless betrayal of a rare
animal isn’t really so, though, and Landers explains his reasoning well. His
main argument is that white tigers do not occur naturally in general, and that
they are essentially the result inbreeding and the artificial selection of
mutant genes. We love white tigers because they seem even more exotic than
orange ones, but the fact of the matter is that they were essentially created
for our entertainment.
We are not, in fact, preserving an endangered species. We
are creating one. Massive amounts of inbreeding such as what has been done on
tigers often leads to kidney problems, club feet, shortened tendons, crossed
eyes, spatial problems, a lack of camouflage, poor brain to eye communication,
and more. The recessive gene that makes a tiger’s fur white is very rare, and
to keep it in circulation requires that this inbreeding take place. By doing
so, we are creating animals that would never survive the wild on their own and
suffer daily from a number of deformities.
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums recently
banned its zoos from breeding white tigers, lions, and cheetahs, which will
prevent many of the larger zoos from actively inbreeding and profiting off of
resulting animal sales. But that certainly doesn’t stop other organizations
from breeding and selling the animals to zoos.
Jackson Landers also points out that every dollar we reserve
for a white tiger or other genetically mutated animal is one dollar we have to
support breeding programs for endangered species like the Sumatran or Siberian
tigers, which might someday be able to be reintroduced to the wild. He
certainly doesn’t call for an abandonment of white tigers—rather, he suggests
that we stop actively breeding them, support the currently living animals, and
let them die off—as nature intended in the first place.
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