Golden Tabby Tiger

Golden tigers in zoos
Few zoos have bred or exhibited golden tigers and many have no knowledge the color or its mode inheritance. It therefore usually appears by accident when breeding orange and white tigers together rather than through planning. As white tigers and heterozygous normal colored tigers are traded and loaned between zoos and circuses for breeding, if they also carry the wide band gene, that gene becomes widespread. When their descendants are mated together, the golden tiger color is passed on to the fspring if both parents are gene carriers. Unless golden tabby cubs are born, the zoos may have no idea that the parents carry that gene.
The first golden tiger cub born in captivity was in 1983 and this came from standard-colored Bengal tigers, both whom carried the recessive genes for both the golden tiger and white colors. It was born at Dr. Josip Marcan's Adriatic Animal Attractions in Deland, Florida.