A prosecutor has now directly intervened in the case of a four-month-old white tiger that was abandoned under a bin outside the Attica Zoological Park near Athens. The cub was found with serious health problems and the experts were initially pessimistic about whether the little animal would survive.
The Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court Anastasia Masoura intervened in the case after it came to light through a video that man left a paralysed tiger cub under a bin outside the Attica Zoological Park.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJwZSYQpP7k
The supreme prosecutor requested that those responsible for the abuse and abandonment of the animal, which is estimated to be a victim of wildlife trade, be identified.
According to Proto Thema, the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, who oversees all incidents of abuse and abandonment of animals, will visit in the next few days, together with the First Instance Prosecutor Ms. Stathoulopoulou, who is also dealing with the abuse of the tiger, the zoo.
It is noted that, after special care, the tiger has shown signs of improvement and within the week is expected to undergo tests on the course of his health.
“No one knows where it came from or how it got here,” park founder Jean Jacques Lesueur told Proto Thema daily. “It’s in terrible condition,” he said.
As he explained to Newsbomb.gr, it is obviously the act of an unscrupulous person, who, after illegally acquiring the white cub, decided to get rid of it because of its disability.
For her part, the president of the Panhellenic Philanthropic Federation, Irini Molfesi, spoke about the issue, saying that the animal "passed under the nose of the controlling authorities in a strange way," adding that "there are rich people who want to have wild animals in their mansions".
The rare white tiger cub was found under trash bin in a street near the zoo, about 25 kilometres from Athens centre
"We were informed by the waste collection service that they saw an animal. She is a small female tiger, female... From time to time they leave turtles, rabbits and guinea pigs outside the Attica Zoological Park. Domestic animals. But a tiger?," continued the founder of the park.
"The abandoned white tiger is about 3-4 months old and cannot walk as it still has difficulty crawling with the front limbs. It's in bad shape. It's not a Bengal or Sumatran, it's a white tiger," said Lesueur.
"It's a tiger mutation, which you usually find in circuses. They are not animals you find in nature, they are products of mutation. This tiger will reach a length of two metres and a weight of 200 kilograms," he added.
Rare white tiger cub
Conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) describes white tigers as “a genetic anomaly,” with none known to exist in the wild.
They are often the result of inbreeding, exposing them to a host of health problems at birth. A white tiger’s pale colouration is due to the lack of the red and yellow pheomelanin pigments that normally produce the orange colouration.
An additional genetic condition can result in a near-complete absence of stripes, making the tiger almost pure white.
The colour of the white tiger’s fur is the result of a genetic mutation called leucism. In fact, this white coat would be a hindrance in the wild, as it doesn’t provide a tiger with any camouflage, which greatly reduces their chance of survival.
In the US, all white tigers originate from a single male white continental tiger which was imported to the country decades ago, WWF says.
The park says it hosts more than 2,000 animals from 290 different species.
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