Reports and records indicate however, that a few wild tigers have been seen in unusual colors, including all white and all black. White tigers are not a separate subspecies of tiger, and they are not albinos, they are just white-colored Bengal tigers. White tigers are only born when two tigers that both carry the unusual gene for white coloring mate - their color is caused by a double recessive allele. A Bengal tiger with two normal alleles or one normal and one white allele is colored orange. Only a double dose of the mutant allele results in white tigers.
White tigers have blue eyes, pink noses, and creamy white fur with chocolate colored stripes.
The only wild white tigers ever reported are white-colored Bengal tigers found in India. In captivity, however there are some white tigers that are hybrids - a mix of different subspecies. White Bengal tigers are sometimes mated with tigers from other subspecies, producing white hybrid tigers Today only about 5,000-7,400 wild tigers live across Asia. The past and present ranges of the remaining five tiger subspecies are the northernmost living tiger, the Siberian tiger, lives primarily in southeastern Russia. The South China tiger occurs only in southern China.