White tigers were first recorded in India in the 1500s, but the last wild one was shot in 1958. Still, this spectral animal thrives in captivity. Its captivating white coat and blue eyes have made it a popular mainstay of zoos, and a small number of individuals have been repeatedly bred with each other to boost captive numbers. There were just a few dozen in the 1970s. Now, there are hundreds.

The white tiger isn’t a species in its own right, or even a subspecies. Instead, it’s a mutant version of the Bengal tiger, whose orange coat has whitened thanks to an extremely rare recessive gene. If a tiger inherits two copies of this recessive variant, one from each