Nearly half a century after tribals of Similipal in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha claimed they had spotted a rare black tiger, researchers have finally solved the mystery of this unique feature. They found that approximately 37 per cent of tigers in the Similipal Tiger Reserve are pseudomelanistic, characterised by wide, merged stripes. The research compared the findings with genetic analyses …
More than half a century ago, when the tribals of Similipal in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha reported sightings of “black tigers” — their stripes almost fused together in patches threatening to obliterate parts of their burnished orange coats — nobody believed them at first. “You can imagine it in bacteria or the SARS-CoV-2, but in tigers?” Two factors are probably …
