Chennai: To attract more visitors to the Arignar Anna Zoological Park, the zoo officials have released three month old, two black tiger cubs and one white tiger cub in an enclosure along with their mother Namrutha for public viewing.
A press release said, “On 9 January 2019 a female white tigress named ‘Namrutha’ sired with ‘Nagula’ male tiger (Carrying white gene) had given birth to a male and two female cubs at the zoo.
Out of the three, two cubs were found to have darker stripes than the normal tiger showing, the sign of melanistic tiger.”
A black tiger is a rare colour variant of the tiger and is not a distinct species or geographic species. Most black mammals are due to the non agouti mutation. So called melanistic or 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. The other cub is white coloured same as its parents. Arignar Anna Zoological Park has 28 tigers including the recent new borns.
The zoo has also made special arrangement for the zoo visitors to enjoy their summer holiday at the zoo. The ‘Zoo Shop’ is now opened for the public to purchase animal related souvenir products like keychains, caps, T-shirts, toys. More products are soon to be displayed for purchase at this shop.
‘Virtual Reality Show’ of jungle safari/underwater marine views are also running on the zoo premises that attracts the visitors to make their visit more memorable.