Are white tigers albinos?
White tigers are simply white-coloured Bengals and not a separate subspecies as many people think (it would perhaps be more accurate to call it an aberrant colouration). They lack much of their normal colour so can be considered albinistic, but the presence of pigmentation causing the stripes and colour in the lips, paw pads and nose, means they are not albinos. A white tiger can only be born when both parents carry the unusual gene for white colouring. The double recessive allele in the genetic code only turns up naturally about once in every 10,000 births. For unexplained reasons it seems to occur only in the Bengal subspecies. http://www.answers.com/topic/white-tigers http://www.lairweb.org.nz/tiger/albinos.
