As a kid, I had an encyclopaedia meant for younger children (along the lines of “100 Interesting Science Facts” or something like that) which contained a small section about lions and tigers interbreeding to produce offspring termed ligers and tigons.
Now, in all my years watching the Discovery Channel and National Geographic, I have never once seen a documentary on this topic. Nor have I ever come across any reference to these odd creatures in any text, apart from the original encyclopaedia article. A Google search does return entries, even some with pictures, but none from what I would call a “reputable” source on the issue. One set of pictures I found can be seen here, the source being this PBS site.
Can anyone verify that these animals do exist? Also, why is there so little information about them out there?!
If you ever get to see the Discovery Channel show: “Humanzee”, look for the film footage of ligers. The main thrust of the show is junky crap about Oliver, a chimp that was pushed as a human/chimp hybrid for years, but there is a part of the show devoted to real cross species offspring. Seeing a still picture of a liger just can’t compare to seeing one stride around on film!!
Is it just me, or do the ligers on the page look rather deformed? The female looks bulky and ill-shaped around the shoulders, and the male’s legs look foreshortened and weak.
There’s even been a very rare fertile tigon. There was some footage of the mother and her cub on one of those Animal Planet ‘rescue shelter’-type shows. Everyone had assumed she was infertile, so hadn’t bothered to segregate her from the males.
Oops!
:eek:
I’ve had the pleasure of bottle-feeding a liger cub. Even a very young liger is one hell of a handfull!
Given that tigers and lions don’t share the same territories in the wild (see tigers and lions) is it safe to assume that ligers and tigons are the product of human intervention? Artificial insemination, maybe?
Ligers, the offspring of male lions and female tigers, are larger than either tigers OR lions. They are MASSIVE. Check out this graphic representation. Tigons, the offspring of male tigers and female lions are smaller than either, and are apparently much more rare than ligers. Tigons do not have manes or have small ones, ligers have huge ones. Ligers also have spots - interestingly, from their lion rather than tiger half.
They are extremely rare in the wild, but I think there have been ‘sightings’. All of the ligers and tigons that have been studied are the product of zoo matings (which do happen, sometimes without the handlers expecting it); I haven’t seen any references to artificial insemination.
Someone mentioned that some tigons are fertile - that is the case. This has two interesting sequelae. First, there are such things as ti-tigons and li-tigons, their offspring. Second, it becomes obvious that we need to question our definition of species or our classification of lions and tigers as two seperate species.
Now, as a fun way to end, I offer you this site. It has provided me with endless amusement.
Please correct me if I’m wrong (hey, it’s been known to happen), but isn’t it true that lions and tigers don’t even inhabit the same continent? So how could there be sightings in the wild? Unless we’re talking about captive animals being returned to the wild or something.
The bother I had at work last year trying to convince people these things existed. There can’t be any in the wild, Tigers and Lions never interact. All of them bred so far have been in captivity, and I very much doubt they’d release them into the wild - don’t they eat too much? Also, no survival instincts if they’ve been hand reared since birth.
I think Siegfried and Roy had one too, before the tiget decided to invest in Roys neck.
Not true. Lions are native to Africa, and are still found in Asia (in a little corner of India known as the Gir forest). Tigers are native to Asia - south Asia, all the way up to Siberia. Voila - same continent! Look at my post (#10 in this thread, I think) for a current day map view.
I just noticed that John Mace’s first post in this thread actually contained a Wikipedia cite. Perusing it, I see that:
To the best of my knowledge, this is false. I mean the part about the Gir forest. Gir is home to the Asiatic Lion, but not any sort of tiger. Cite1 and cite2.
Nevertheless, I think it can be assumed that in the days of yore, when we had not quite managed to blast 99% of the big cat populations, their territories probably did intersect somewhat, and liger-tigon cases could have been sighted in the wild.
And LaurAnge - the front page is :D, but I think we’ve managed to Dope the rest of the site.
The other thing to note is that many of these ‘sightings’ are historical - vague accounts from way back when their ranges did overlap. Personally, I put very little credence in them. More likely they just saw a large, spotted lion,
"The stripes are inherited from its tiger parent and the spots from the lion parent. "
Did I miss the bit where lions have spots? They just look like normal (if faint) tiger stripes to me.
Anyway, I’ve seen them on tv. The largest of the big cats, they said. (No cite, sorry.) It looks like it should be chasing mastadons.
Historically, leopards were believed to be the result of matings between cheetahs and lions (leo = lion, pard = cheetah) so I’d have to see some photographs to believe this ever happens in the wild and wasn’t a misunderstanding.
