Maltese Tiger

The Maltese tiger, or blue tiger, is a suspected coloration morph of a tiger, reported mostly from the Fujian Province of China. It is said to have bluish fur with dark grey stripes. The term "Maltese" comes from domestic cat terminology for blue fur, and refers to the slate grey coloration. Many cats with such colouration are present in Malta, which may have given rise to the use of the adjective in this context; however the tigers have nothing to do with the island.

Most of the Maltese tigers reported have been of the South Chinese subspecies. The South Chinese tiger today is critically endangered, and the "blue" alleles may be wholly extinct. However, "blue" tigers have also been reported from Korea, home of Amur tigers.

It has long been believed that it is honorable to be killed by a Maltese Tiger. Local tribes would sacrifice themselves to these tigers because they believe they would be reincarnated as one.

ightings

Around 1910, Desmond Collier, an American missionary and big game hunter, spotted and hunted a blue tiger outside Fuzhou. His search is chronicled in his book "Blue Tiger" (1924)cite book
last = Caldwell
first = Harry R
authorlink = Harry R Caldwell
title = Blue Tiger
publisher = Abingdon Press
year = 1924] , and by his hunting companion Roy Chapman Andrews in his "Camps & Trails in China" (1925, chapter VII).cite book
last = Chapman Andrews
first = Roy
authorlink = Roy Chapman Andrews
title = Camps & Trails in China: A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China
publisher = Appleton
year = 1925 [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12296/12296-h/12296-h.htm HTML fulltext] at Project Gutenberg] . Chapman cites Caldwell thus:

"The markings of the beast are strikingly beautiful. The ground color is of a delicate shade of maltese, changing into light gray-blue on the underparts. The stripes are well defined and like those of the ordinary yellow tiger." -- Caldwell in Chapman (1925)

A more recent report, given to "Mystery Cats of the World" author Dr Karl Shuker, comes from the son of a US Army soldier who served in Korea during the Korean War. His father sighted a blue tiger in the mountains near what is now the Demilitarized Zone. Blue tigers have also been reported from Burma.

A smokey blueVerify source|date=August 2007 hypermelanic tiger cub was born in the Oklahoma Zoo in 1964 to ordinary Bengal tiger parents. It died in infancy and is preserved as a wet specimen. There are no blue tigers in zoos or private collections, and no known blue tiger pelts.

The black tiger was also long considered mythical, but several pelts have proven that pseudo-melanistic or hypermelanic tigers do exist. They are not wholly black, but have dense, wide stripes that partially obscure the orange background colour. The hypermelanic tiger cub born in captivity at Oklahoma City Zoo had a smokey hue between some of the stripes.

Genetics

:"See also: Cat coat genetics"In support of the blue tiger theory, Maltese-colored cats certainly do exist. The most common is a domestic breed, the Russian Blue, but blue bobcats and lynxes have also been recorded, and there are genetic mutations and combinations that result in bluish hue, or at least in the impression of a blue-gray animal. Shuker suggested that blue tigers possessed two different pairs of recessive alleles - the non-agouti (s/s), and the dilute (d/d)cite book
last = Shuker
first = Karl P N
authorlink = Karl Shuker
title = Mystery Cats of the World: From Blue Tigers To Exmoor Beasts
publisher = Robert Hale
year = 1989
isbn = 0-7090-3706-6] which combine to produce a solid blue-gray colour as found in domestic cats such as the British Shorthair and Russian Blue, but would not produce the striped blue tigers reported.

Simply combining non-agouti and dilute alleles would probably indeed result in a greyish or "maltese" tiger, but such an animal would have hardly-visible stripes or none at all: Normal tigers switch between agouti (orange) and non-agouti (black) in different areas of their pelage, as well as suppressing melanin production thoroughly (white). The non-agouti mutation would produce animals similar to black panthers which have only a "ghost" pattern, all hair being black but the hairs of their rosettes retaining a different texture and thus, "black-on-black" rosettes are visible under appropriate lighting. Combined with all-dilute alleles, the color would be grey, but it would still result in an unstriped or ghost-striped tiger.

For a maltese-and-striped fur, pheomelanin production must probably be suppressed (to switch from an orange to a greyish color) but agouti retained (to yield darker stripes); perhaps some hypermelanism would also be present, to produce an animal with a non-white belly as reported by Caldwell. Indeed, such a genotype is known in cheetahs, where it produces animals that are bluish gray with dark slate grey pattern. If factors such as lighting conditions are accounted for, this makes a reasonable match with Caldwell's individual.

A variant expression of the non-inhibited pigment ("chinchilla ") allele - the allele in other contexts producing white tigers - is also sometimes deemed possible. This would produce a "haze" effect over the whole body. Combined with a pheomelanin suppression, it would produce a white animal with light gray pattern; such specimens are also known in the Cheetah.

Possible distribution

In small or isolated populations, genetic drift can fix unusual traits such as aberrant coloration. A non-harmful mutation can soon become widespread in small, isolated populations. And if the mutant gene confers benefits, such as better camouflage, then affected individuals may out-compete those without the mutation; this would happen faster in a small inbred population close to panmixia.

External links

* [http://www.cryptozoology.com/glossary/glossary_topic.php?id=21 Article at Cryptzoology.com]
* [http://www.messybeast.com/genetics/tigers-blue.htm Blue Tigers]
* [http://www.newanimal.org/btiger.htm The Cryptid Zoo: Blue and Black Tigers]
* [http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200706041964.htm Rare (Black) Indian tigers spotted at Similipal National Park, The Hindu Newspaper, June 4, 2007]

References