Research overview: golden tabby and other tiger color variants

Besides the white tiger, captive tigers occasionally display a golden or strawberry coloration with pale orange fur and faint cinnamon stripes, as well as theoretical combinations such as the snow-white form. This overview surveys what is understood about these rare color variants as recessive traits within the Bengal tiger, their likely basis in pigmentation-pathway genes, and the heavy inbreeding required to express them in captivity. It addresses why such variants are essentially absent from wild populations, the conservation concerns about breeding for novelty coloration, and how these phenotypes relate to the better-characterized white-tiger SLC45A2 variant. It emphasizes that these dramatic colors, however appealing, are products of deliberate inbreeding for a recessive trait and carry no conservation value for wild tiger populations.