India, Nov. 13 -- A combined effort of scientists and the Odisha forest department has just saved Similipal's tigers from inbreeding depression. Is genetic rescue a new way to conserve wildlife? A few years ago, the elusive tigers of Similipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha started to change their stripes. The coat on their backs became darker, a condition locals call a black tiger and scientists call pseudo-melanism. To try and understand what was happening, the forest department brought in Dr Uma Ramakrishnan, a molecular ecologist at National Centre for Biological Sciences who specialises in the wild population of tigers. Ramakrishnan collected faecal samples of tigers in the reserve, ran tests on them, and found the anomaly: A mutation in a pa...