Is the Maltese blue tiger a myth or a reality?

The Maltese blue tiger is practically a mythical creature, because, in addition to eyewitness accounts, there is no evidence of its existence. Until today, people have not been able to find this animal neither dead nor alive, there are not even photos. Although from time to time messages are coming from the Chinese province of Fujian, and also from Korea and Burma, about the appearance of the tiger. Despite the name, the animal has nothing to do with Malta. It's all about the color of his coat. According to eyewitness accounts, the predator has dark gray stripes with bluish fur.

It so happened that the domestic cats bluish-gray shade called Maltese, because there are a lot of them on the island. For the first time about the unusual predator, the world learned from the missionary and hunter Harry R. Caldwell. An American during his journey through China killed a dozen large cats, but the Maltese blue tiger did not succumb to him, but only teased and disappeared, like a visionary vision. If you believe Caldwell, he saw the animal in the vicinity of Fuzhou. At first he took him for a bent peasant in blue clothes, but then he saw the head of a tiger. The hunter could not immediately shoot, as the children were running beside him, and while he tried on and changed his position, the predator ran away.

The Maltese blue tiger also met local residents. The Chinese claimed that the "black devils" were really wandering around the villages. Caldwell repeatedly with his son organized expeditions to find this mysterious animal, they even managed to find shreds of his wool on the branches of bushes, but nothing more. The Maltese tiger has a very beautiful coat. The main color is bluish gray, on the belly it is slightly lighter, on this background the black bands are very clearly visible .

Most likely, it is a subspecies of the South Chinese tiger, which is on the verge of extinction. It is likely that individuals with similar color could already completely disappear from the face of the earth, although from time to time there are reports of their appearance. Many skeptics do not believe that the Maltese blue tiger exists, because there is no evidence. Caldwell can not be called a liar, but still there are no photographs or evidence of experts. Some researchers believe that people could perceive for the Maltese ordinary yellow tiger, piled in the mud.

One can not openly deny the existence of such an animal. The Maltese blue tiger can be obtained thanks to a combination of the degeneration gene and non-agouti. Of course, this is very difficult, since such predators would be practically black or gray with barely noticeable stripes. However, in nature, nothing is impossible, because black big cats have long been considered fiction and myth until their skin was discovered. Animals-melanists exist, one of them can be the Maltese tiger.

Photo of the predator has not yet been made available to anyone, but it should be recognized that in some isolated populations genetic drift can provoke an abnormal coat color. If the mutation does not adversely affect the development of the animal, the species can spread quite quickly. If the Maltese tigers exist, they are no more than three dozen.