[Watch] Spotted: Rare Black Tiger In Odisha’s Similipal National Park

Photo courtesy NDTV

Bhubaneswar: In a rare sighting at Odisha’s Similipal National Park, a black tiger is seen leaving scratch marks on a tree to mark its territory.

Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Susanta Nanda shared the clip of the rare melanistic tiger on International Tiger Day on Friday.

Black or pseudo-melanistic tigers sport large dark stripes and are rare.

These are Bengal tigers with a single base mutation in a particular gene. This mutation causes the tigers’ distinctive black stripes to enlarge and overshadow the orange portion.

“The rare tigers were first officially discovered in STR (Similipal Tiger Reserve) in 2007,” another IFS officer Parveen Kasveen wrote.