Few zoos have bred or exhibited golden tigers and many have no knowledge of the color or its mode of 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 carrying the wide band gene are traded and loaned between zoos and circuses for breeding, that gene becomes more widespread. When their descendants are mated together, the golden tiger color is passed on to the offspring 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 of 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