another. This was the start of a practice that
eventually produced 91 white cubs from 1974 to- The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that the
zoo sold the cubs for $40,000 to $60,000 each.
The Cincinnati Zoo, which is accredited by the
AZA, stopped breeding white tigers after 1990.
In 2012 the AZA banned the practice for its affil-
iates. Both did so because of numerous health
problems in inbred cats and because breeding
for white tigers had no conservation value.
“The days of breeding white tigers in accred-
ited zoos are over,” says Thane Maynard, director
of the Cincinnati Zoo. AZA president Dan Ashe,
director of the Fish and Wildlife Service from 2011
to 2017, says breeding for recessive traits “is sim-
ply unethical from the standpoint of the welfare
of the population and of the individual animal.”
Philadelphia in 1874, it exhibited a tiger, as did
many of the hundred-plus “zoological parks”
and 650 circuses that sprouted nationwide
during the next half century.
Fast-forward to 1960. Billionaire John Kluge
bought a white Bengal tiger, Mohini, from
India’s maharaja of Rewa and donated it to the
National Zoo in Washington, D.C. The female
had ice-blue eyes, a pink nose, and milky fur
slashed by dark stripes. She was one of only
seven in the world, all in captivity.
Mohini wasn’t an albino or a separate subspe-
cies. Her snowy coat came from a pair of reces-
sive genes, one from each parent. Breeding with
her half brother produced the first white cub in
the U.S. in 1964. The Cincinnati Zoo borrowed
two of her children, which also were bred to one
108 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC