Blue Tigers
Artists impression of what a blue tiger might look like The image is from Wikimedia Commons, licensed for use here. There is no reference to blue tigers in the well-respected book on wildcats, Wild Cats of the World And there are no specimens or hard records of blue tigers. There have been occasional sightings however. They appear to concern the South China tiger, which I say is now extinct and the Siberian tiger in Korea (there are question marks as to whether there are any left in Korea). The most famous sighting was apparently in 1910 by Methodist missionary Harry R. Caldwell in the Fujian Province of China. The blue tiger is also referred to as the Maltese tiger. This is arguably confusing as there are no wild tigers in Malta. The word "Maltese" refers to the "Maltese locus" a position on a chromosome of a gene that causes dilution of the color of the fur . The pigment granules in the hair strands are enlarged and deposited unevenly in the individual hai...