FEATURES
FEATURES
'Ligers' and 'Tigons':
The Exotic Hybrid Big Cats
By Der Voron
It is claimed that lionesses must be sedated in order to mate with a leopard or tiger. The urge to mate can be so strong that a lioness in heat may willingly allow a smaller leopard to mate with her.
In Amman Zoo, Jordan, Jassass, a 250 kilogram seven-year-old lion, and Warda, a 120 kg six year old tigress were introduced to each other on August 30, 2001. On this occasion, the tigress rebuffed the lion's overtures, but zoo keepers are hopeful that the pair will mate.
Liger is the offspring of a male lion and a female tigress, and is
named after the combination of their names: l(ion)+(t)iger. It is bigger than either parent, 10 - 12 ft in length
and the weight of up to 1,400 pounds - making it the biggest hybrid cat and, for many people, the most fascinating. Ligers vary in appearance depending on how the genes interact and on which subspecies of lion and tiger are bred together. In general, males grow sparse leonine manes and the facial ruff of a tiger. Males and females have spotted bellies and a striped back. They roar like lions and "chuff" like tigers. The females exhibit conflicting needs for sisterhood (pride-like activities of lionesses) and solitude (a tiger-like trait).
For comparison, a male
Amur tiger, the largest naturally occurring wild cat, weighs on average between 400 and 600 pounds, with the maximum weight recorded
about 900 pounds. Nonetheless, this giant is able to reach the same speed as it’s
parents: up to 50 miles per hour at short distances, and it walks as silently as them.
On these photos you can see the male liger called Hobbs, the son of an African
lion and a Bengal tigress. This giant weighs about 1,100
pounds, has a leonine mane and roars like his father, and, though he doesn’t chuff like his mother, he is fond of swimming, like her (all
ligers have this trait and borrow it from their mothers tigresses).
Lions don’t like to swim, and the leonine side of liger’s nature first makes it a little hard, for the owner, to persuade a liger that
the water is useful, but the tiger side finally takes over). Also Hobbs likes to play.
Where did Hobbs get spots? He inherited them from his daddy: lions do have spots in childhood and adolescence, but these disappear when the
lion becomes adult, though on some lions spots get preserved even when they get mature.
If Hobbs' mother were a white tiger then he could become a white liger, and if she were a golden liger then he could become a golden
liger. Vice versa, if his father were a Barbary lion, then he could
have a thicker and darker mane and perhaps a hair stripe along his belly.
The photos above show Samson and Sudan, "cubs" of a lion and a
tigress who (the lion and the tigress) were raised together. These ligers look more tiger-like, and they don't have manes, while Hobbs
with his mane looks more like a lion (but both these bros have lion spots, just like Hobbs, and like water, like him). Samson weighs
about 1,100 pounds and is able to develop, at short distances, the speed of 50 miles per hour. Sudan is "subtler" and weighs "only"
about 1,000 pounds, perhaps because of constant circus exercises. I don't have the data about the top speed reached by Sudan, but I
think, if he is so trained, he could be able to reach even some 90 to 100 miles per hour.
And on this photo we can see Diesel, also a male liger. Weighs 850
pounds and seems very "subtle" (in comparison with Hobbs, Sudan, and Samson).
Ligers didn't emerge just "20-30 years ago" as a "result of modern hybridization
technologies". On this photo from 1904, you can see a liger--offspring of a Bengal tigress and an Asiatic lion. Judging
by it’s size (just a bit bigger than the "daddy"), this liger seems to be a female.
Male ligers are sterile--no fertile males have been found, at least to-date; else it would be possible to breed these giant cats. Female
ligers are fertile, which allows breeding hybrid creatures like the one shown below (called ti-liger, from
Tiger father and LIGER mother). Perhaps the ligers' sterility issue could be solved
genetically, by changing some of tiger and lion genes which are responsible for the creation of the offspring's reproduction system.
Or maybe, when one or several fertile male ligers will be born, the ligers' reproduction will get
a green light.
Do ligers occur in the wild?
This is highly unlikely, because:
1) Lions and tigers live in absolutely different areas (almost all lions in Africa and all tigers in Asia). Yet about 200 lions live in
the Gir National Park and Lion Sanctuary in Bangladesh, India... but there is no even one tiger within 100 miles from this area.
2) If even they met, the tiger, being a very solitary cat, would be
unwilling to join in with the lions who usually live in prides -- and almost all lionesses live in prides. Tigers avoid even other tigers,
except when it is time for them to mate...But perhaps if a tigress would meet a non-pride lion (a lion who doesn't have a pride of lionesses), then a liger could occur in the
wild?
Then they would have cubs, similar to those shown below.
Ligers' life span is from 20 to 25 years. Lions also live up to this time; at least, the oldest known lion died at 26.
You may ask, "what will be the result if we cross a male tiger with a female lion?" That will be a
tigon (also called tiglon); unlike the
liger, this creature is much smaller in size than both of it’s parents. Females are often fertile, while males, like liger males,
seem to be always sterile.
Two tigons (male to the left, female to the right)
Perhaps the liger is even the biggest cat that ever existed in the history. At least, encyclopaedical data for fossil cats--saber-
toothed Smilodon, including the biggest of Smilodons, Smilodon populator; Homotherium, Dinofelis, Metailurus,
Megantereon, Machairodont, others, and their ancestor Pseudaelurus--don't show
that these cats were as big as ligers. Perhaps only the cave lion that became extinct only 10,000 years ago, was as big as the liger;
as scientific sources report, it was "about 1/3 times bigger than the modern lion". Thus, the liger could be called the cave lion of our
days.
Ligers are not the only hybrid animals that have been created, nor they are the only cat hybrid animals. The most commonly known example
of human-created hybrids is the mule, a cross of a male donkey and a mare (less known is hinny, a cross of a stallion with a female
donkey). And below you can see photos of:
Other cat hybrids:
A "leopon" -- a hybrid of lion and leopard;
A "jaglion" -- a hybrid of lion and jaguar;
A "pumapard" - a hybrid of puma and leopard. One of most interesting traits of the "pumapard" is that it is the offspring of animals
belonging to different genera (puma to Felis and leopard to Panthera), as these genera are classified nowadays--not to
different species within one genus, like horses, zebras, and donkeys, and tigers and lions--which makes the pumapard's classification,
within the existing animals taxonomy, doubtful.
A "boblynx" -- a hybrid of bobcat and lynx;
A "caraval" - a hybrid of caracal to serval;
"Non-cat" interspecies hybrids (males almost always fertile):
A "zonkey" -- a hybrid of zebra and donkey;
A "zorse" -- a hybrid of zebra and horse;
A "zony" - a hybrid of zebra and pony;
The "Toast of Botswana", -- a hybrid of a female goat to a male sheep;
A "cama" -- a hybrid of camel and llama;
A "yakalo" - a hybrid of buffalo or bison and yak;
A "cattalo" (or "beefalo") -- a cross of a bison with a domestic cattle;
A "coywolf" -- a hybrid of coyote and wolf;
A "wholphin" -- a hybrid of a bottlenose dolphin mother and a false killer whale father. Same situation like with the
"pumapard" (parents
belong to different genera).
Some intraspecies hybrids (both genders fertile):
A "wig" -- a cross of a wild and a domestic pig;
An unnamed cross of a Siberian and a Manchurian tiger.
For more data on hybrid animals, you can visit the following sites:
Der Voron is a writer and translator. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and works as an independent contractor for a computer company. His website is http://starcraft-version1.tripod.com/. His email is der-voron@linkeseite.zzn.com. He is now preparing the second edition of his book, Starcraft.
