Rare white tiger among new cubs born at Havana zoo

The birth of the four striped cubs on March 12 came after more than 20 years of efforts by the zoo's tiger breeding program to reproduce the endangered animals.

"It was a normal birth, everything went well and she's now started to carry out her role as a mother, she's a good mother,'' said Angel Pachy, a tiger specialist at the zoo.

"And something else that has brought us a lot of joy is that among the cubs was a white tiger. A white tiger had never been born in Cuba. We have reports of all the births in all the zoos in the country since zoos came into existence in Cuba and we've never had a white tiger so we are even happier because white tigers are very rare in nature and there are very few of them," he added.

White tigers are a genetic variation of the better-known orange Bengal tigers. Thousands of tigers once roamed the forests in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. But their numbers have plummeted to just about 2,500 now, wildlife experts say. Poaching, deforestation and over-hunting have all taken their toll on the tigers.