What are Snow Tigers?

Zabu the white tiger of Big Cat Rescue

Snow Tigers? There is no cat species known as a "snow tiger"

What are snow tigers?  There is no single answer to that question, because there is no cat species known as a "snow tiger".  It could be that people are referring to Snow Leopards, a gray cat with charcoal spots that lives above the permafrost line in mountain tops at the top of the world.  If that is the cat you are thinking of, you can read more about them at Snow Leopards.

Some people refer to tigers who live where it snows, as Snow Tigers, but that would be Siberian Tigers which are also known at Amur Tigers and you can read more about them at More About Tigers.

There has been a huge deception played out by the entertainment industry that there is such a thing as a Royal White Bengal Tiger and these are sometimes referred to as Snow Tigers, but they are not a species of tiger, but rather an inbred and cross bred version of tiger that was created only because people will pay to see a white tiger. They cannot be used for conservation breeding and suffer all of the problems associated with inbreeding.  You can read The Truth About White Tigers.

The White Lion and White Liger also come from severe inbreeding, just to get the white coat, causing serious birth defects and you can read more about that at Ligers.

The White Servals in the slide show above were the product of indiscriminate breeding as well and have been neutered to prevent future generations of cats who would suffer from birth defects, just to fill an ignorant market caused by people who don't know where that white coat really comes from.

White tigers do not live to adulthood in the wild and do not live in areas where it snows.