And this related page has pictures of spotted adult lions.
hijack: that “unusual animal coloration” site has a spotted whitetail deer and a spotted caribou. That was kinda cool.
As a kid growing up in northeast Ohio in the 1960’s and '70’s, I was familiar with Jungle Larry, who kept several tiglons (as he called them) and ligers in his Safari Island attraction at Cedar Point. When I worked on the Kiddieland crew at “The Point” in the summer of '79, I occasionally paid Tuesday (my only day off) visits to Safari Island, where I saw the ligers and tiglons not only in their enclosures, but performing in the “Harmony Circus”. Jungle L:arry also paid a pre-Christmas visit to my elementary school when I was in third grade (1967), but I don’t think he brought any of his big cats along. Judging by the linked article, he may not yet have acquired or bred any hybrids at that time.
One thing I’ve wondered about is why female ligers and tigons are different. They are, after all, genetically equivalent, as far as I can tell, carrying the same repertoire of chromosomes (whereas a male liger gets it’s Y from a lion and X from tiger, while a male tigon gets its Y from a tiger and it’s X from a lion). But ligers are generally much bigger than tigons, as has been mentioned above. I can only think of two possibilities: A) The prenatal environment has enough of an impact on future development that ligers are prone to overgrowth, while tigons are prone to undergrowth, compared to their parents; or B) there may be something non-random about gene silencing on the X’s in females that is dependent on paternity independantly of uterine environment, making them more like their male counterparts in terms of size (it’s not as crazy as it sounds…check this out). Either way, there must be something genetically imprinted early on.
I suppose an experiment to test either hypothesis could be carried out by producing female liger embryos in vitro, and implanting them in lions. Big ligers from lion mothers would favor B, while small ligers from lion mothers would favor A. Visa versa for all to do a similar experiment in tiger moms.
I may be waiting a while to get a definitive answer to that question…
Actually, now that I think of it, ligers get tiger cytoplasm to start off with, and inherit only tiger mitochondira, too. Those factors could have some impact, I suppose, perhaps moreso the former.
It’s an interesting ponderable example of factors other than simple inherited genetic sequences having a major and consistent impact on development.
Time for turkey!
Genetics is so bizarrely complicated that I couldn’t dream of citing actual knowledge, but I’ve read that tigons (they’re the small ones, right?) receive two copies of a growth suppressor gene, while ligers don’t receive any copies. That’s either the result of some sorta sex-linked gene silencing, or else those genes are on the sex chromosomes.
I crossed a praying mantis with a termite!!
What did you get???
A bug that says grace before he eats your house!!
I crossed a penguin with a school teacher!!
What did you get??
A formal education!!
Leapons officially have the best name ever. (And they’re pretty cool looking, too.)