Cincy still has white tigers, too, but I don’t know whether they breed them now.

Another argument against having aberrant color forms is that they take space and use resources that could be used for normally colored animals of the endangered species.

I understand why some people are against aberrant colored animals as zoo attractions, but I do not agree. I personally don’t have a problem with responsible zoos breeding aberrant coat colors, provided that the animals are well cared for and not sold as ”pets”, and that the normally-colored offspring are given the same care. Tracing the heredity of aberrant colors and patterns can tell us something about how colors and patterns become established within small populations. Aberrant color patterns that occur from time to time also give us some ideas of what type of patterning and/or coloring is possible with a species, and can point to what some related but now-extinct species may have looked like.

Besides, I like novelty as much as any other human. I love to go to zoos and it’s a bonus when there are unusually colored animals to see .

Sure, it’s not feasible to release off-colored animals into the wild - but then, it’s generally not feasible to release any captive-bred animals into the wild. As zoo animals they do fine, though, and because of the human love of novelty, people will go to zoos just to see them. They may go to the zoo time and time again to see the white tigers or the king cheetahs or the white gators or whatever, but those same people usually to want to learn more about that species in general, and to support conservation programs.

The important thing that must be stressed is that the aberrantly colored animals are just that - aberrant. They shouldn’t be referred to as ”Royal” this or ”Rare” that - they are anomalies and they should be presented as such. There is no wild ”breed” of Rare Golden Tabby Tiger, nor is there any such thing as a Royal White Bengal Tiger.

Despite all the shrill screaming about aberrants being ”unnatural”, however, they do occur from time to time in the wild, and sometimes, as seems to be the case with blue or white bears and king cheetahs for example, the odd coloring does not seem to affect their survival at all. I believe that even white tigers born in the wild could survive about as well as colored tigers. They still have stripes to break up the body outline, and most prey animals alert to movement, not to color.

If conditions are right they can live to reproduce and thus pass on the trait. It’s feasible to imagine that under some circumstances aberrant colors can become a sizable part of the general species population, as in the case of melanistic color phases in various species of cats.

The sad thing is, that given the fractured state of most species’ natural habitat today, there’s not much chance that either aberrantly colored animals or their normally colored brethren will even continue to exist and evolve, except in zoos, game parks, and other types of captivity.

Whoever stole the white gators is probably looking for a sale on the animal market. But the white gators are going to be in the herpetocultural world like the Mona Lisa is in the art world. You may “own it” once you buy it from the thief, but you can never share it and let anyone know that you have it.

Nothing like an albino alligator.
White Tigers, too.