Animation Source Forums

I heard/read somewhere that there were infact Black tigers, they were mostly black with gold/orange stripes, it said that one has'nt been seen in 100/200 years but it is possible that they do still exist just that humans never see them, I'm not 100% sure that this is true but really cool of it is.

i think they dont exsiset

ya never know i never herd but hey it might just be true^^

That melanism in tigers would exist, that's possible. Yet, the reports of black tigers (or even lions) base solely on vague stories told and retold by local people. Evidence for them has never been found.

Maybe the reason humans never see Black Tigers is,because they're nocturnal animals?

A tiger can be active at any time of the day. In fact they have to, if they want to survive.

What would be an answer on the "mystery" of black tigers, that's the fact that their populations are so small today: it might well be that all black representants have already been brought to extinction, and that the reproductivity rate of the families still carrying the melanism error in their genes simply is too low as that a black specimen would appear.

That's most likely, they'd probably be much rarer than the white tiger and it did'nt say which subspecies of tiger had been headr of with black colouring, it just said 'tiger' and that's not exacly helpful. It'd still be cool though.

Wow.. I really hope there are black tigers!! That would be so cool. As long as people wouldn't hunt them to extinction like so many other animals...

I agree, but hey, if they do exist, they should be preserved in the history of the world and be protected around the world!

Regular tigers are but unfortunately that does'nt stop poachers killing them, the poachers will even kill police or wildlife reserve rangers so they can escape with their 'prize', laws banning tiger hunting won't stop them because the price for tiger parts is so high and people will pay lots of money to get real tiger skin, bones, whiskers basically anything from the tiger will be bought for a high price and in China people make 'medicine' from tiger body parts including the bones, whiskers, teeth, claws and eyes and this 'medicine' is nothing more than ancient beliefs and the product itself has no medicinal effect at all but as long as people are willing to buy tiger parts the longer the poachers will keep killing them and unfortunately, no matter how many petitions or organizations there are, we will not be able to stop people buying them, it's sad but true.

I'll look it up on Google, see what i can dig up and report back

Unless you'd go to Asia investigating tiger populations, there isn't anything you could research. All we know of melanistic Tigers are mysterious reports, which always lead to a loose end.

You never know what you'll find over the internet with the correct key words

Yeah, but surely not evidence for a melanistic tiger

I had a look on Google and found a photo of a black tiger cub that had been killed but it was in some sort of glass jar and you could'nt really see anything that resembled a tiger, quite a few other sites had articles about the melanistic tigers but no real evidence of their existence like photographs only what people have said, like you said Kovu, the only real way to find out is to go to Asia for a few years and study tiger populations, and hope you get lucky, any reports of Melanistic tigers are very widely spread and they much rarer than the white tiger, probably harder to find than the Sumatran tiger, and that's very rare.