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I personally don't think that many of them exist well enough for us to be sure about them. Though it is a possibility (because albino tigers are the result of a genetic mutation...it could very easily be the same case for black tigers), I'm guessing that they would be even harder to find than an albino tiger, considering that from what I've read about them, an alive black tiger has never been seen before.

Quite a few people have said they've seen a black tiger but they had no proof of their claims so they were dismissed, I don't know which sub-species of tiger has been seen as black and until we know there is no way of telling just how rare they are eg. if it's the Bengal tiger chances are greater than if it's the Sumatran tiger, but even so melanistic tigers would be near-impossible to find, tigers are secretive in the first place.

Agreed

Ah... white tigers aren't albinos. They are leucistic.

Alright... first of all: a species "panther" has never existed. Americans usually 'misuse' that term for pumas (Puma concolor), as far as I know.

Secondly: the word "panther" in its original meaning simply describes the black body colouration that can appear in two pantherine species, the leopard (Panthera pardus) and the jaguar (Panthera onca). A black panther is not more than a melanistic leopard or jaguar. Eventhough they aren't closer related to each other, that pigmentation error exists among them.

Now, if we find a black tiger (Panthera tigris), would that mean it's closely related to jaguars and leopards? No - actually, tigers are closely related to lions (Panthera leo) [which is also evident in the ligon/tigon breeding issue], but even more distant to jaguars or leopards. Melanistic lions or tigers have never been documented (while the still large lion populations would allow us to discover a black specimen faster, technically). So, except for the fact that they all belong to the same genus (Panthera), they aren't closer related because of melanism.

Melanism is not more than an increased amount of black or nearly black pigmentation in skin, hair or feathers, going back to a mutation in the genes of the concerning families of certain specimen. Technically it could happen to any big cat, but actual evidence for black tigers or lions has never been brought up.

What you can find so far as media for "black tigers", that's all made up in the human mind. Either it's just people who claim to have seen a black tiger, or it's people that had a creative output up on that matter (movies, paintings).

The clade family would be "pantherinae". But I wasn't talking about that type of family. I mean the actual family such a black specimen is born in.


That doesn't matter. You can't just "breed" out a colouration. It simply happens once, and when you have a black specimen - you can manage to rebreed it. The chance it happens in a Captivity isn't any higher than in the wild, because captive populations still are a lot smaller than wild populations. And, to quote myself:


(to which I should add that I don't mean individuals, I'm talking about species)


No, it's known from two panthera species: Jaguar and Leopard. To quote myself again:

Indeed there are melanistic tigers, there was a house cat that turned pink, so why not a tiger?
Here is a link to a site that talks about weird tiger colorings: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... D%26sa%3DN

You believe about everything you find on the internet, right?

No. I do not.

A pink cat!?!....I don't believe that for one second I'm afraid, that's a genetic impossibility I'm sure, you can't get a pink cat. Black tigers, I'm pretty sure exist or at least used to and there has'nt been one for years although I do believe it's just that humans have'nt seen them, but a pink cat...no, definately no, I just can't believe that to be true, especially since I know a lot about felines/pantherines already and I'm going too learn much more about them, canids too, that I can't bring myself to believe this.

No, it was in the kids national geopraphic magozine.
It was like some kind of wrong medications or dye.

I've heard of a lady who dyed her two boxer dogs, one green and the other blue so they would 'match her favourite outfit', weird and also really cruel, a pink cat...ugh, odd.

Not totally pink, here is a link to the artical: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... n%26sa%3DN

Highly possible but they probably don't exisit anymore some one could've mistaken it for like a panther or some other big cat.

I doubt it, it might be just dye.