What would happen if you tried to impregnant a house cat with a lions sperm? Could a housecat carry the little to term since the lion babies are so big? Would it be a crap shoot as to how big the cats would be?
I may be missing something though, is this even possible? I Am thinking that a cat can have any other cats baby kinda like dogs can crossbreed.
Would a lion/housecat combo unit be allowed in the city?
Housecats and lions are completely different species. They’re not even in the same genus. (Felus catus and Panthera leo, IIRC.) So they could not breed.
The only reason they’re both called “cats” is because they’re both in the Felidae family.
the species are too different to interbred. Theres enuf problems even between lions and tigers to prevent them from interbreeding. They may have done it before but the ofspring are infertile.
Now, if they can breed elephants with pot bellied pigs to make pot-bellied elephants, that would be intersting…
Friedo has nailed it…onyl one way for a possible breeding…changing the lions genus or somewhat…but then agin for <b>now<b/> thats impossible.
“Changing the genus” would accomplish nothing, as it’s merely the way that we humans categorize the different species on the planet. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had “changed the genus” on various species before when new information about relative degrees of relationship was discovered via DNA, etc. What friedo was simply noting is how different genetically the two species are.
What you might have been trying to bring up is genetic engineering to allow the two species to interbreed, but at that point the altered specimen really isn’t the original species any longer, so that doesn’t work either.
Sure… that is if you want your cat split in two!
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. And as others have stated, no, it is not possible with our current technology.
Usually. The males are always infertile, but some fertile female mules have been produced.
A housecat definitely could not carry a Big Cat’s offspring to term. Hybrids between domestic cats and the largish Caracal ( still in the genus Felis ) have shown that pretty conclusively ( theri offspring only survive with human intervention ). At any rate, I’m guessing that the disjunction between the genera Panthera and Felis is probably sufficient to prevent breeding, though I don’t know if any one has attempted it.
However some members of the genus Felis are interfertile, to a lesser or greater degree. Generally the first generation offspring retain the temperment of the wild parent and are poor pets. This essay goes into this for a variety of cats in some detail: http://messybeast.com/hybrids.htm
As far as the term genus goes, Ferret Herder is quite right - It is an artificial category and can only be defined relative to an individual group. For example cross-generic crosses between some snakes ( closely related genera to be sure ) have been successfully created ( i.e. ‘Jungle Corns’ - Lampropeltis getula x Elaphe guttata ).
Tamerlane, out of curiosity, do you know what happens to the official taxonomy of snakes when such a cross-genus animal is created? Is the offspring put in its own genus, or is one of the parent genera chosen?
Not exactly on point, but I saw a Tonight Show with a lion/tiger cross once. The result is a liger or tigon and the size depends on which species was the father and mother. Anyway, this result was an absolutely huge critter measuring at least 11 feet from snout to tail, the biggest cat I’d ever seen by a large margin. Jay Leno got on a tall ladder and fed it milk so the audience could see it stretching out. Leno is not a small man, but he was tiny in comparison, and looked like he would make the critter a small snack. Lion Tiger offspring are always infertile. But so are mules supposedly.
Yeah, but lions and tigers are both in the same genus (Panthera) and so are horses and donkeys (Equus) so infertile cross-species offspring is expected to happen from time to time. It’s cross-genus offspring that’s particularly weird.
Generally nothing happens. To the professional systematic biology/taxonomy community at large, such organism are usually referred to, as one friend of mine charmingly put it, as ‘non-valid lifeforms’ :D.
Since they are completely artificial in origin, they don’t impinge on formal classification schemes at all. If you wanted to call them something other than their colloquial name ( i.e. something like ‘Jungle Corn’ ), you’d probably just refer to them as “the hybrid of such-and-such”.
This site talks about a specific liger (A liger is the result of breeding a male lion with a female tiger) re Friedo’s Q. it says there is no official scientific name
http://www.sierrasafarizoo.com/animals/liger.htm
Site also makes Sparticus’s point re it being bigger than either parent species
Finally also adresses the point re fertility – at least one documented case of a Tigon (maletiger/Femalelion) being fertile.
Indeed we have. I have an old zoology textbook from 1979 which lists lions as being Leo leo, and tigers as Leo tigris. Since then, both lions and tigers have been moved to the genus Panthera.
And then, of course, there is the (in)famous case of Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus. Often enough, when a taxon is re-examined, that taxon winds up classified differently.
fauxpas writes:
“Friedo has nailed it…onyl one way for a possible breeding…changing the lions genus or somewhat…but then agin for <b>now<b/> thats impossible.”
When does school start back again? Can you piggyback spelling onto your biology class? Maybe you can use your post or one of your OPs as a resume for an online job or a gig as a game programmer?
Yes, but you’d have to bring a lot of catnip.
Successful hybridisation between genera isn’t unheard of. Doplhin X false killer whale hybrids, goat X sheep hybrids and cattle X bison hybrids are all known to exist and all cross the genus barrer. In the case of the cattle bison hybrids the offspring are perfectly fertile.
There are several fertile cross genus cat hybrids floating around out their in people’s living rooms right now. Felis X Prionalauris, Felis x Leptailurus and a couple of other cross-species hybrids are being sold in the US right now as house pets. Obviously it’s not the arbitrary genus barrier that prevents cats from interbreeding.
Domestic cats and lions probbly couldn’t hybridise, but I wouldn’t garauntee this until I knew that it had been attempted and failed. Obviouly some form of artificial insemination or other assiatnce is going to be required and AFAIK no one has ever actually tried.
I am not aware of any attempt to cross a Lion with a Cat, even in vitro but there are plenty of reported cases of Puma (Felus) crossed with a Leopard (Pantera).
The hybrid called a pumapard suffers from Dwarfism but they’re perfectly viable.
see below
Zombie killer cats!
I’m sure the guys from Pantera have mated with a few cougars in their day.