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Why White Tigers Should Go Extinct
- kruipen 14y agoThis article clarified in my mind what it was that had been bothering me about slate.com. It is tabloid for "sophisticates".
- sonabinu 14y agoI thought the white tigers were Siberian tigers. Thanks for the information.
- maxharris 14y agoI don't accept the premise that whatever man touches is somehow automatically tainted or corrupted. Nor do I accept the premise that man is somehow unnatural. All things, including men, obey the laws of thermodynamics. There is no problem with man changing the course of nature. Why not release some white tigers and actually see how they evolve, instead of simply assuming that they won't thrive?
- manojlds 14y agoWhere is the assumption? How will a tiger that can be easily spotted, is cross eyed and has problems including kidney failure supposed to survive in the wild?
- maxharris 14y agoFrom an evolutionary standpoint, all that matters is that the tiger is able to reproduce. If it isn't, an attempt to introduce the breed somewhere will fail. No big deal. ...unless you hold the tiger in your mind in the same way you would your own house cat. But that's warped, because a house cat can't and won't eat you. I still think the claims of all these problems with captive tigers are overblown. Animals in the wild have plenty of health problems. The difference is that there aren't nearly as many people scrutinizing and treating them.
- gojomo 14y ago…a house cat can't and won't eat you… Never say never: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1922/will-cats-eat-their-owners http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1922/will-cats-eat-...
- maxerickson 14y agoSuitable habitat is a limited resource. It might be a big deal wasting it on white tigers (or it might be a big deal wasting the political energy required to do the reintroduction on doomed animals).
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- Retric 14y agoExcept there are plenty of healthy wild animals and zero healthy white tigers. So, in the wild ALL white tigers are unable to survive long enough to reproduce.
- theshadow 14y agoDid you read the article? It clearly states that the "species" is unstable, prone to health problems and has major reproductive issues. What do you expect is going to happen if they are in the wild?
- simonsarris 14y agoWell, that's true of a lot of dog breeds, especially ones with very long or very short noses. Massive reproductive issues and would not survive in the wild. French bulldogs have to be almost exclusively birthed by C-section, because their heads are so big, and the females typically need to be inseminated by artificial insemination, because the males have a very hard time mounting females. But they're very popular and widespread. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Bulldog#Health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Bulldog#Health
- lazerwalker 14y agoYes, but dogs are domesticated animals we enjoy keeping as pets, not untamed wild animals we're discussing releasing into natural environments.
- chimeracoder 14y agoAlso, while some dog breeds are indeed endangered (or newly extinct) on the verge of extinction[1], many are dramatically overpopulated beyond sustainable proportions. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahltan_Bear_Dog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahltan_Bear_Dog [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Extinct_dog_breeds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Extinct_dog_breeds
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoBut nobody is saying "We are breeding these wolves that have been led down a genetic path that makes them unable to survive without man's help to save the wolves in the wild". It is also highly unlikely that any dog breeding programs are taking any resources away from wolf conservation, but that is exactly what is happening in the white tiger case.
- antidaily 14y agonuff said http://cdn.pbh2.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/inbred-white-tiger-kenny-2.jpg http://cdn.pbh2.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/inb...
- mscarborough 14y agoRelease them where? And to "thrive" like the general tiger population? Nothing in this article posits the premises you argue against.
- pavanky 14y ago> I don't accept the premise that whatever man touches is somehow automatically tainted or corrupted. That is not what the author is pointing to at all! Nothing even remotely close to it. > There is no problem with man changing the course of nature. Of course not, look at all the dogs we have. Not many have issues with it. But some of the breeds are just bred for humans to go "awww", that we do not consider how many of these breeds have high risk of disease and death. > Why not release some white tigers and actually see how they evolve, instead of simply assuming that they won't thrive? There are already 4000 tigers in the wild. The author is not asking for planned execution, but to put an end to the inbreeding programs disguised as "conservation efforts". Also the gene in the wild for thousands of years before humans started breeding them selectively. And that gene did not win out the evolutionary race.
- wpietri 14y agoWhy in the would we introduce an artificial species to compete with existing endangered species in a shrinking ecosystem?
- bluedanieru 14y ago>I don't accept the premise that whatever man touches is somehow automatically tainted or corrupted. Nor do I accept the premise that man is somehow unnatural. I accept both, and especially the second, but I'm not anti-human or anything. It's just that we have really, really, rocketed past the rest of life on Earth, evolutionarily speaking. We destroy species, entire ecosystems, accidentally with little effort and often without even noticing until after the fact, if we notice at all. We are probably within the next 100-500 years going to reach a point where the existence of other life on Earth is not necessary for our survival. We have already passed the point where we can kill off most of it, perhaps all. So, I don't know if you could say we have a "responsibility" to other life on Earth (although I tend to think we do), but, if we want to keep it around in anything resembling its current form, we do have to consider ourselves as apart from it in some sense. If we engage the rest of life on Earth as equals, we will likely kill most or all of it off, because there really is no contest.
- manojlds 14y agoAfter reading this, I googled to confirm that white elephants, which I thought to be natural too, are indeed natural. They are.
- Shenglong 14y agoA white tiger that has already been born does not have a vote in the matter and cannot apologize for existing. Humanity has a collective responsibility to care for the two-headed calves and white tigers that we create for our own entertainment, but do we really need to be creating more of the genetic disasters that pull resources away from truly endangered species? There is no good reason to breed another white tiger. I'm trying to understand the moral implications here. The author paints a very heart-touching and grim picture, and it's tempting to agree. But what happens when you apply this to humans?
- jeremyjh 14y agoDid you even read the article? The tigers were intentionally inbred to spread this mutation. There is no analog of this in humans; inbreeding is unnecessary and does no tiger a favor by continuing it.
- Drakim 14y agoExactly. One has to realize what is being argued for, not going around the globe murdering white tigers, but to stop contiguously inbreeding them to maintain the strange white fur.
- rymith 14y agoOh, you mean the way we did so with wolves to create the thousands of dog species that exist today. By this absurd logic, all dogs should go extinct.
- jwilsco 14y agoDogs are bred to live with humans. Tigers are not.
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- nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
- jacob019 14y agoThe real crime is misinformation. If everyone read this article the problem would go away.
- duopixel 14y agoMost people are aware that animals in circuses don't live a happy life, yet they choose to go see them.
- lmm 14y agoI was under the impression circuses with animals were dying out, at least in civilized countries.
- jmilloy 14y agoYou're assuming that with correct information comes correct/moral behavior, and that it's clear what that behavior is.
- Hawkee 14y agoI asked my wife what she knows about white tigers and she said, "Isn't it some sort of gene that makes them white, and aren't they kinda sick?" Better than I would have said before reading this.
- vermontdevil 14y agoHave you seen pictures? Here's one: http://i.imgur.com/LEj1n.jpg http://i.imgur.com/LEj1n.jpg There's a lot more out there like this.
- meaty 14y agoI took in a cat from a shelter that looked worse than that. No shit. Its face had a tumor from birth to the point it couldn't meow - just make farting noises, much to everyone's amusement.
- neic 14y agoJust a thought: I wonder if we could help the awareness of white tigers by making a meme with a picture of a defect white tiger that look "fun". Similar to all of these [0]. By spreading the awareness of the white tiger more more people seek information on them and hopefully more would be enlighted of their bad shape. [0] https://www.google.dk/search?q=animal+meme&hl=en&tbm=isch https://www.google.dk/search?q=animal+meme&hl=en&tbm...
- sliverstorm 14y agoWhat do you do then when people decide they are "cute", and we should breed even more?
- smsm42 14y agoIt is fascinating how much of preservation effort is related to cuteness. If the animal is not cute, who cares. If you manage to snap a cute photo of it - get ready to get millions of financing.
- mgarfias 14y agoI'd like to schutzhund train one. Or maybe it's schutzkatze?
- bluehat 14y agoAs somebody who works for a 501c3... why is there such poor accountability that funding for species preservation is being used on white tigers? If I'm not mistaken, a lot of zoo money is nonprofit money. If we can prove to grant-writers and donors that the money is being used outside of what it was intended for normally the money dries up. Seems like that would solve the problem pretty quickly...
- wink 14y agoMany of the venues that display white tigers have a long history of shading the truth about their mutants. IIRC in the Singapore Zoo (the last one I went to this summer) had some extensive information about the origins of the white tigers, no shading this. Would've been interesting to see some more examples of different takes of the zoos in the article.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoOr they could do what cattlemen do: systematic outbreeding, and culling of defectives. Excessive inbreeding is not the only choice.
- draq 14y agoThe question here, as I understand, is not whether breeding programmes are ethical, but whether misleading the general population with false information is ethical. Is it ethical to ask for donations or ticket prices to zoos by giving people the impression that their money will (partially) go to conservation efforts, while the money is spent to breed animals that cannot survive in the wild but only for "marketing" purposes?
- b0rsuk 14y agoSlate keeps impressing me with thought-provoking articles.
- beloch 14y agoIf you'd like more in depth look at the "American Tiger", check out the Nature of Things documentary of that title. http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/american-tiger.html http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/american-tiger.html It covers everything that's in this Slate article, but actually goes to the trouble of getting opinions from experts in the field of conservation, genetics, etc..
- dlitz 14y agoIt doesn't work from the US. We just get a creepy voice that says, "This content is currently unavailable."
- nu2ycombinator 14y agoWow. All these days I was thinking that white tiger is a natural habitant of siberia.
- Gravityloss 14y agoThere are less than four thousand tigers in total in the wild. Not white tigers, any tigers. That's shocking. In a few decades there probably won't be any. http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/tigers/about_tigers/tiger_population/ http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/tigers/ab...
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoIts true, and maybe irrelevant. There is no place for tigers on a settled planet. We have many uses for land, and letting fabulously dangerous carnivores randomly wander huge tracts is one of the less important ones. I know there are ecological arguments. Maybe those are meaningful some places, but for an Iowa farm boy they are ludicrous. This continent (North American great plains anyway) has been 'reformatted' several times in the last 500 years. There has been no permanent catastrophic ecological collapse; no runaway doomsday scenario has occurred. Sure there was a dust storm in Oklahoma (ok, hundreds of them) in the '30s, which drove the science to understand and tame them, which has been done. We are perfectly capable of 'terraforming' our own planet, and are doing so at an accelerating, perhaps unstoppable rate. I can only conclude, tigers are doomed. Zoos are amusing; you may argue they're cruel or whatnot but its the only place your grandchildren will be viewing tigers at all so factor that into your outrage. Anyway, with genetic programming we'll be able to have dwarf pink polka-dotted tigers that fetch your slippers if you want, so really what does it matter? The accidental population of our planet when we 'discovered' it are really of no consequence, compared to what we will be doing with it in the future.
- philwelch 14y agoThere has been a number of mass extinction events in world history, the most well known being the extinction of the dinosaurs. That much impact on an ecosystem all at once had massive, unpredictable effects. At current rates, we are currently experiencing a mass extinction event worse than the one that killed the dinosaurs. I am not fond of making large, random changes to complex systems that affect us.
- 14y ago