You are probably wondering why I am saying this rare species should go extinct. After all, shouldn't we try to preserve the rare creatures of Earth? Yes we should, but this is one of the creatures that can be made an exception..
White tigers look like majestic, dream-like creatures. Even so, they were not naturally meant to be here..
There are thousands of captive tigers in zoos and similar places all around the world. As the source says,"If tigers can survive and breed well in captivity, then perhaps more can be introduced to the wild when safe habitat becomes available." But this isn't going to work for many of the tiger species in captivity. A large portion of the captive tigers(like the white tiger shown above) are hybrids of various subspecies. Remember how I said earlier that white tigers were naturally not meant to be here?
Quote from source: White tigers are not a subspecies at all but rather the result of a mutant gene that has been artificially selected through massive inbreeding to produce oddball animals for human entertainment.
Many zoos that feature mutant creatures hide the fact that the creatures are indeed mutants.
One example, the Cincinnati Zoo, label the white tigers that they showcase as "species at risk!". From source,"Nowhere on the zoo’s website or at its tiger enclosures does it point out that this species at risk is in fact an ecologically useless hybrid of Bengal and Siberian strains, inbred at the zoo’s own facility for big money." The zoo kept breeding to create these creatures, to end up selling them for about $60,000 each.
Making white tigers go extinct doesn't mean shooting them all with machine guns, nor letting them to starve. Nothing lasts forever, even the life of a mutant tiger. So instead of torture before death, why not try happiness before death?
And a good summarizer for this post. Here is the last paragraph from the source:
"A white tiger that has already been born does not have a vote in the matter and cannot apologize for existing. Humanity has a collective responsibility to care for the two-headed calves and white tigers that we create for our own entertainment, but do we really need to be creating more of the genetic disasters that pull resources away from truly endangered species? There is no good reason to breed another white tiger. We can choose to keep every remaining white tiger in comfortable isolation. Tigers are solitary in the wild (unlike lions, which are social animals that normally live in prides). They do not need the company of other tigers in order to lead happy lives either in the wild or in captivity. We can choose a future in which white tigers disappear into memory and hopefully one in which truly endangered subspecies of tigers maintain enough genetic diversity to be successfully reintroduced into a wild that can sustain them. "
Read more at: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/12/white_tiger_controversy_zoos_shouldn_t_raise_these_inbred_ecologically_irrelevant.single.html
Source:http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/12/white_tiger_controversy_zoos_shouldn_t_raise_these_inbred_ecologically_irrelevant.single.html
~Jeff~
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