ATHENS: Greece’s leading animal park on Wednesday said it had recovered a rare white tiger cub found abandoned on a nearby street earlier this week.

Attica Zoological Park outside Athens said the four-month-old female cub, which was found beneath a garbage bin near the premises, was paralysed from the waist down.

“No one knows where it came from or how it got here,” park founder Jean Jacques Lesueur told Proto Thema daily, adding that the feline was likely abandoned on Monday. “It’s in terrible condition,” he said.

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. The park says it hosts more than 2,000 animals from 290 different species.

It was criticised last year after an alpha male chimpanzee escaped its enclosure during operating hours, and was later shot dead for public safety reasons.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2023