Black tiger (animal)
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Most black mammals are due to the non-agouti mutation. Agouti refers to the ticking of each individual hair. In certain light, the pattern still shows up because the background colour is less dense than the colour of the markings. There are unconfirmed reports and one painting (now lost) of pure black non-striped tigers (true melanistic tigers), but no physical evidence.
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[edit] Pseudo-melanism in tigers
So-called black tigers are due to pseudo-melanism. Pseudo-melanistic tigers have thick stripes so close together that the tawny background is barely visible between stripes. Such tigers are said to be getting more common due to inbreeding. They are also said to be smaller than normal tigers, perhaps also due to inbreeding or because large black leopards are misidentified as black tigers.
[edit] Historical reports of black tigers
In 1772, while in the service of John Company in southwest India, artist James Forbes painted a magnificent watercolour of a black tiger shot a few months earlier by the Nairs in that region. The painting has been lost, but Forbes' description of it survives: I have also the opportunity of adding the portrait of an extraordinary Tyger [sic], shot a few months ago by the Nairs in this neighbourhood, and presented to the chief as a great curiosity. It was entirely black yet striped in the manner of the Royal-Tyger, with shades of a still darker hue, like the richest black, glossed with purple. My pencil is very deficient in displaying these mingled tints; nor do I know how to describe them better than by the difference you would observe in a black cloth variegated with shades of a rich velvet. This corresponds to ghost markings similar to those on black panthers.
The Tower of London menagerie, founded in the 13th Century by Henry III and operational until 1831 (it was relocated to its present site in Regents Park, now London Zoo) once contained a black tiger from the East Indies; it was more likely to have been a black leopard. The 1786 book "Sophie in London" records Sophie's impressions of this cat: "The all-black tiger, which Mr Hastings brought with him from the East Indies is most handsome, but his tigery glance is horrible." The Observer newspaper on 27 January 1844 records a black tiger (also probably a black leopard) intended as a present for Napoleon from the King of Java. This tiger was displayed at Kendrick's menagerie in Piccadilly, London. A black tiger pelt displayed at the Los Angeles Country Museum, USA was probably a black leopard.
In 1846, the naturalist C T Buckland reported a black tiger in the Chittagong Hills (now in Bangladesh) where it was raiding cattle. It was shot with a poisoned arrow and its body was later discovered. Buckland wrote an account for The Field and this article printed in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (Volume 4) during 1889, documented the case of a black tiger killed at Chittagong. Buckland wrote:
No authentic record exists of a black tiger having been seen or killed in Bengal, so I am informed. Black leopards are well known, especially in the Madras Presidency and in the Straits Settlements, and I have heard of them in Bengal, though I never saw them alive there (except in the Calcutta Zoological Gardens). But before I go hence and am no more seen, I wish to state that I and several others saw a dead black tiger at Chittagong, and from the entries in my diary, which was pretty regularly kept, I know that it was in March 1846. The news was brought into the station that a dead black tiger was lying near the road that leads to Tipperah, distant about two miles from Chittagong. In the early morning we rode out to see it; but several of the party - Sir H. Ricketts, Mr. Fulwar Skipwith, Captain Swatman and Captain Hore - are no longer alive, and I cannot produce any eye-witness to attest my statement, although several friends to whom I have written recollect that they heard something about it at the time.
I remember perfectly well that the body of the animal was lying in the low bush jungle about twenty yards south of the road, and we dismounted to go and look at it. It was a full-sized tiger, and the skin was black or very dark brown, so that the stripes showed rather a darker black in the sunlight, just as the spots are visible on the skin of a black leopard. The tiger had been killed by a poisoned arrow, and had wandered away more than a mile from the place where it was wounded before it lay down to die. By the time that we arrived the carcass was swollen, the flies were buzzing about it, and decomposition had set in, so that those of our party who knew best decided that the skin could not be saved.
The report is further dubious because more than 40 years had elapsed between the actual event and the report. In September 1895, a very clear sighting of a supposed black tiger was made by Colonel S Capper using a hunter's telescope; the tiger disappeared into the jungle. The presence of black leopards in the area and the difficulty of accurately judging size makes this a dubious report though. The various accounts of black tiger sightings were details in "The Wildlife of India" by E.P. Gee.
In 1913, TA Hauxwell shot at a black tiger, but did not recover the body. He reported this in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. A jet-black tiger with no visible markings was apparently shot in Assam, India in 1915; unlike most melanistic big cats, which have shadowy patterns visible from certain angles, this jet black individual had no appearance of striping. A dead black tiger was reported south of Assam in 1928, but the skin was too decayed to be saved. Another one from around the same date was reported in the Central Provinces and had dark brown coats with black markings T Banjie's report "Tigers in China " (1983) alleged several sightings of black tigers in the Dongning area of China. Sightings occurred in 1951, 1953 and 1957 and a black tiger was allegedly captured in 1972. Black tigers are also part of Vietnamese legend. The depletion of tigers in those regions may have eliminated the carriers of genes for melanism and pseudo-melanism. A "black tiger" shot in Manipur state in the early 1930s was actually a black bear, but was called a black tiger to take advantage of the bounty offered for such creatures! In 1936, a black tiger captured in Dibrugarh turned out to be a black leopard, but a skin with chocolate brown background and black stripes was reported in the same year in the Central Provinces.
Two reports of black tigers - from Chittagong and from the Lushai Hills - were based on decomposing animals whose skins could not be preserved. AT Hauxwell fired at an apparent black tiger near Bhamo, in Burma, but it escaped. AA Dunbar Brander of the British Indian Forest Service wrote I once watched three tigers feeding on a fresh kill and the largest animal which had of course selected the favourite place between the buttocks, managed to get itself smothered in blood, all the visible white being covered. As I was watching this performance, which was in broad daylight, the red of the blood changed to black as it rapidly does, and had I not witnessed this transformation and come on the tigers without being aware of what had happened, I would have been firmly convinced that I had seen a black tiger.
According to SH Prater writing for the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (JBNHS) in January 1937, The London Evening News, 10 October 1936, published a Reuters account of a black "Royal Bengal" tiger captured in a forest in Dibrugarh, Assam. The manager of a local tea estate captured the tiger in a baited iron cage. The Conservator of Forests, Assam was unable to get a clear view of the black tiger, but advised the Society that it was trapped on 4 September 1936 in the Nepaphoo Tea Estate owned by Bagchi Brothers of Dibrugarh and it was sold to wild animal dealers Messrs PKB Akuli of Barrackpore Road, Calcutta. Dr Baini Prashad, Director of the Zoological Survey of India, Indian Museum, Calcutta made further enquiries and learnt that the creature was a black leopard and not, as reported by Reuters, a tiger. Sankahal noted that the "Dibrugarh Black Tiger" had been reported to be 12 ft long and 3.5 ft high turned out to be a 7 ft black leopard. R. I. Pocock wrote "A ridiculous measurement (12 feet) ever for a tiger: the animal would require another pair of legs in the middle of its body, like a billiard table, to support its weight." The term "bagh" does not mean "tiger", but refers to cats and is prefixed by "spotted" or "striped" etc to denote the type of bagh.
Pocock's article in the JBNHS (vol xxxiii, p505) recorded 3 reports of black tigers: the 1846 Chittagong specimen reported by Mr CF Buckland in the Field (vol lxxiii, p42, p789) and in the JBNHS (vol iv, p149); the 1913 Bhamo, Burmo specimen reported by Mr AT Hauxwell (JBNHS, xxxii, p788) and the Lushai Hills, Assam specimen (Field, 1928, p 656). Col S Capper (JBNHS, vol xxiii, p343), while shooting in the Cardamom Hills, S India, saw through a telescope a black animal lying on a rock and identified it as a tiger. Black leopards were present in the area and the identification is therefore dubious. Brigadier-General Burton wrote in his book "Sport and Wildlife in the Deccan" that light and shade in the jungle can give erroneous impressions of an animal's colour, thus casting doubt on Hauxwell's black tiger also.
Captain Guy Dollman of the British Natural History Museum wrote in The Times, 14 October 1936 of 2 cases of melanism in the tiger. The first was a young individual shot in the Central Provinces some years previously. It was dark brown all over with stripes appearing black on the dark ground colour. The second was an animal shot in 1915 by natives east of Dibrugarh, Assam. Dollman wrote There can be no doubt that the animals I have referred to above were tigers and not leopards.
In response to Dollman, Mr WH Carter wrote in the Times of 16 October 1936 I was much interested in Captain Guy Dollman's letter on black tigers in The Times of October 14, having been resident in the neighbourhood mentioned by him for years. In one of the official district Gazetteers of Bengal (Khulna or Backerganj) there is mentioned a local variety of tiger which had lost its stripes as camouflage in the open sandy tracts of Sunderbans. The uniform colour scheme adopted was however, brown and not black, but perhaps his cousin in the hinterland found black more suited to his background. The author of the Gazetteer in question is, I believe, dead.
[edit] Recent reports
During the early 1970s, Oklahoma City Zoo's pair of tigers produced six litters. Three of the four cubs in the third litter were abnormally coloured. One had the normal background colour but all four limbs were abnormally dark. A second had dark feet, though these gradually grew lighter as it matured and were the normal colour when it reached adulthood. The third, and most interesting, had the normal background colour, but considerable darkening over the shoulders, down both front legs, over the pelvis, and encompassing both black legs. The darkening was more-or-less the same colour as the stripes. The striped pattern was only visible over the darkened areas. Unfortunately, three of the cubs were killed by the mother, leaving only the dark-footed cub. The black cub was preserved in formalin. Quite possibly it would have become lighter in colour as it matured, just like the feet of the surviving cub.
During winter 1975/6, two adult black tigers were seen in bright sunlight on the road leading to Matughar meadow; the sighting was made by Orissa Forest Service officials accompanied by two foreign tourists. In 1991, a black cub was seen with two adults and a normal colour cub at Devasthali, though this sighting was dismissed as an optical illusion. During 1996, adult black tigers were observed several times. A yellow-striped black tiger was seen near Baladaghar . A black tiger was seen near Bachhurichara, between Patabil and Devasthali. Some time later, a yellow-striped black tiger was seen between Patabil and Devasthali.
In 1992, the pelt of another apparently true melanistic tiger was confiscated from a hunter and smuggler at Tis Hazari, south Delhi. The top of the head and back were black, while the sides showed shadow striping on a black background colour. The pelt was exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History, New Delhi, in February 1993. In 1993, a young boy shot a melanistic female tiger in self defence with a bow and arrow, near the village of Podagad, west of Similipal Tiger Reserve. Initial examination suggested the background colour was black with white abdominal stripes and tawny dorsal stripes. According to Valmik Thapar in "Tiger The Ultimate Guide", the only proof of black tigers is a skin with a black head and back. K Ullas Karanth wrote in "The Way Of The Tiger" that a partially black tiger was recently killed by poachers in Assam.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- T Banjie, Tigers in China (1983)
- CF Buckland, Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (JBNHS) (vol iv, p149) 1889
- CF Buckland, The Field (vol lxxiii, p42, p789)
- Brigadier-General Burton, Sport and Wildlife in the Deccan
- Col S Capper (JBNHS, vol xxiii, p343)
- Mr WH Carter, Letters, The Times (16 October 1936)
- Capt Guy Dollman, The Times (14 October 1936)
- E P Gee, The Wildlife of India
- Mr AT Hauxwell (JBNHS, xxxii, p788)
- Pocock, Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (JBNHS) Vol xxxiii, p505
- SH Prater, JBNHS, January 1937
- Reuters, The London Evening News, 10 October 1936
- Valmik Thapar, Tiger The Ultimate Guide
- K Ullas Karanth, The Way Of The Tiger
