WHITE TIGER

The story of Winnie, Jippie and Omar

By Trotternama

April 11^th, 2020

White tigers have always been a topic of curiosity and admiration. Perhaps it is their pigmentation (or lack thereof) or rampant inbreeding, or maybe their origins in the Bengal tiger of the Sunderbans, that makes them so exotic.

Exotic enough for authors to win Man Booker awards!

In Arvind Adiga’s White Tiger, the protagonist Balram Halwai is referred to as the White Tiger, a term which symbolizes power in East Asian cultures and also doubles up as a connotation for freedom and individuality. Balram is seen as different from those he grew up with — he is the one who gets out of the “Darkness” and finds his way into the “Light”.

It is reference in popular culture such as this, which makes White Tigers, so interesting. Distinctive due to the colour of their white fur, caused by a lack of the pigment pheomelanin, white tigers are extremely rare — one in about 10,000 births.

A rare hybrid mutant variant of the existing tiger subspecies which symbolises power, freedom and individuality!

Some research says that the last known White Tiger, born in the wild was killed in 1958. Thereafter they have been mostly inbred in captivity and today about 300 of them reside in various Zoo’s across the world .

So you can imagine when Jippie, Winnie and Omar, three White Tigers born in Taman Safari (Indonesia), were brought to Singapore as part of an animal exchange program to celebrate the “Year of the Tiger” in 2001, they quickly became the center of attraction in the Singapore zoo.

While the crowds came, the trio made even bigger headlines in 2008, when they attacked Nordin Montong, a zoo cleaner who had knowingly walked into their enclosure. Nordin died with 90 external injuries in addition to fractures in his skull, neck and ribs.

His death was marked as a case of suicide.

I first saw Winnie, Jippie and Omar in 2008. Thereafter, I have seen them a few more times. Today only Omar lives, but it was always fun to catch them come out, in the clearing of the moat around one in the afternoon, when the zoo keepers would bring them food and they would play or take a leisurely swim.

They always looked gorgeous, pristine white in their show white fur coats. The day I took these pictures, it was around noon. The big cats had just been fed, and they were happy playing around in their enclosure, swimming in the moat and giving onlookers a million opportunities to take pictures, videos and just be enthralled by their feline presence.

However, life has its own course and White Tigers live anywhere between 14–18 years in captivity. Around 2012, Jippie passed away, followed by Winnie in 2014.

From StraitsTimes:

“ Winnie, the 14-year-old female cat had been terminally ill with a worsening tumour in its jaw bone, and the zoo decided to euthanise it on Aug 12 (2014) to prevent further suffering, according to a statement issued by the Wildlife Reserves Singapore. Its brother, Omar, is the only surviving white tiger at the zoo. Jippie, which was from the same family, was put down in March 2012 as it was terminally ill. The three tigers were born around the same time"

This series is one to remember them by.

Button Label