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Maltese Tiger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 Photo illustration of a Maltese tiger (Artistic Rendering)
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The Maltese Tiger is a suspected coloration morph of tiger that has historically been reported in the Fujian Province of China and claimed to have been sighted on a few occasions. It is said to have bluish fur with dark grey stripes. The term Maltese is based on domestic cat terminology refering to the tiger's slate grey coloration; it does not refer to Malta as the origin of the blue tigers.
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Other very occasional sightings have been claimed of bluish-toned tigers, particularly in the Fujian Province. There was one report from the son of a US Army soldier who served in Korea during the Korean War. His father is certain he sighted a blue tiger in the mountains there, near what is now the Demilitarized Zone. Blue tigers have also been reported from Burma. Caldwell's hunting expedition indicated that blue tigers preferred inaccessible regions where they were less likely to be encountered by humans. This kind of cat is not a different breed of animal. It is a genetic mutation caused by cats inbreeding. The fur of the animal is not technically blue, it is white with grey hues, and appears blue from a distance.
A smokey blue pseudo-melanistic tiger cub was born in the Oklahoma Zoo in 1964 to ordinary Bengal tiger parents. It died in infancy and is preserved as a bottled specimen. There are no blue tigers in zoos or private collections; however, an impression of what a Maltese tiger specimen would look like is available at Blue Tigers
In support of the blue tiger theory, Maltese-colored cats certainly do exist. The most common is a domestic breed, the Russian Blue, but blue bobcats and lynxes have also been recorded and there are genetic mutations and combinations that result in blue tonings, or at least in the impression of a blue-gray animal. One such mutation would affect the background hue. More feasible is a variant expression of chinchilla gene (the same gene found in white tigers).
Adding weight to the argument in favour of bluish individuals, for a long time experts considered the black tiger mythical. Several pelts have proven that pseudo-melanistic tigers exist. Such tigers are not wholly black, but have dense, wide stripes that partially obscure the orange background colour. The pseudo-melanistic tiger cub born in captivity had a smokey hue between some of the stripes.
The Maltese tigers reported to date were of the South Chinese subspecies. Fujian Province was the area most famed for the blue colouring and may have been the home of an aberrant population of tigers. Few, if any, blue tigers now exist in the wild. The number of blue tiger sightings is out of proportion to the tiny population (perhaps 30 cats) which may remain and is more likely to be due to observation of normal tigers in poor light conditions. The gene may be extinct in the wild.
In small or isolated populations, inbreeding can fix traits such as unusual coloration. A non-harmful mutation can soon become widespread in small/isolated and inbred populations. If the mutant gene confers benefit e.g. better camouflage, then affected individuals may out-compete those lacking the mutation.
It is possible that blue tigers were due to a form of the chinchilla gene known as "shaded silver" and familiar to domestic cat breeders. The South China tiger is considered the "stem species" from which all other tigers evolved so it is conceivable that the chinchilla mutation occurred in the South China tiger (whose current range covers Fujian province near Taiwan) resulting in blue-gray individuals. That gene might have been inherited by descendent species of tiger resulting in blue and white varieties of tigers. It might have combined with other genes to produce white tigers in the Amur tiger (north eastern China, northern North Korea and Siberia) since the Amur and South China tigers' ranges may have historically overlapped, allowing the spread of the chinchilla gene through interbreeding.
- CALDWELL, Harry R., Blue Tiger (Duckworth: London, 1925)
- Roy Chapman Andrews & Yvette Borup Andrews: A Narrative Of Exploration, Adventure, And Sport In Little-Known China, 1918: Chapter 7 "Blue Tiger"