# Ligers and Tigons and Mules...that's all? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 15, 2007, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337 "2007-09-15T20:28:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/21 "2007-09-16T16:41:14Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] (I don’t think tigers were ever in Africa) [/QUOTE] Not particularly relevant to your question, but there are some [lions in Asia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiatic_lion). (And there are, of course, [tigers, only in Kenya](http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/kenya).) ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/22 "2007-09-16T16:43:54Z")
[QUOTE=astorian] Last time I was at the Ringling Brothers circus, they had a bunch of Zedonks and Zonkeys performing. Those are zebra/donkey hybrids, if the names didn’t already give that away! They LOOK like zebras, but are much more docile and far easier to train. Most animal trainers will tell you it’s a nightmare trying to train a zebra to do anything, even if that zebra was raised in captivity (that’s why, in old Tarzan movies, the “zebras” were usually horses painted with stripes). [/QUOTE] When you put a lanyard with a whistle around the neck of a zebra, it will crave training and ritual. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/23 "2007-09-16T17:14:39Z")
[QUOTE=jjimm] Not particularly relevant to your question, but there are some [lions in Asia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiatic_lion). [/QUOTE] And they had a much wider geographic distribution in Eurasia even in recorded history-- found everywhere from Greece to India. As recently as 10k years ago, you could find lions all over Europe and much of Asia. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/24 "2007-09-16T18:00:13Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] And they had a much wider geographic distribution in Eurasia even in recorded history-- found everywhere from Greece to India. As recently as 10k years ago, you could find lions all over Europe and much of Asia. [/QUOTE] North and South America as well. During the Pleistocene _Panthera leo_ or closely related forms had an extraordinarily wide range, occurring through much of the world with the exception of the Australian region (and of course Antarctica). ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/25 "2007-09-16T19:29:25Z")
One hybrid that has had some commercial success, is buffallo/cattle. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/26 "2007-09-16T19:37:50Z")
My favorite hybrid is the [beefalo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefalo). 3/8 Buffalo and 5/8 cow. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/27 "2007-09-16T20:53:11Z")
[QUOTE=friedo] My favorite hybrid is the [beefalo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefalo). 3/8 Buffalo and 5/8 cow. [/QUOTE] Favorite in what way-- to eat? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/28 "2007-09-16T21:04:40Z")
What we need them to do is breed a lobster with a beefalo, preferably with sturgeon eggs on its skin. ---
**Author:** ![ASAKMOTSD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@ASAKMOTSD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASAKMOTSD)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/29 "2007-09-16T21:17:51Z")
[QUOTE=jjimm] What we need them to do is breed a lobster with a beefalo, preferably with sturgeon eggs on its skin. [/QUOTE] A Surf-n-Turf-alo? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/30 "2007-09-16T22:35:55Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] Take wolf-dog hybrids-would they tend to replace pure wolves? [/quote] Point one is that dogs and wolves are the same species, Canis lupus, so they aren’t interspecies hybrids at all. Point two is that there probably aren’t any pure wolves in the world and there probably haven’t been for thousands of years. Last I saw all wolf populations have a significant fraction of there genetic material coming from dogs, jackals and coyotes and that has been going for eons. > [@](#): > > Also-those bizarre tyons: lions and tigers are geographically sepearte (I don’t think tigers were ever in Africa)-so how are these two different species fertile? Lions and tigers overlapped in India until historical times. But that’s nothing, camels and llamas are interfertile and they are far more temporally and spatially isolated than lions and tigers. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2007, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/31 "2007-09-16T23:23:15Z")
[QUOTE=Blake] Point two is that there probably aren’t any pure wolves in the world and there probably haven’t been for thousands of years. Last I saw all wolf populations have a significant fraction of there genetic material coming from dogs, jackals and coyotes and that has been going for eons. [/QUOTE] Do you have a reference for that? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2007, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337/32 "2007-09-17T00:55:39Z")
[QUOTE=Colibri] Do you have a reference for that? [/QUOTE] That would be interesting to see. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see that most wolves had some coyote or jackal genes, but I’d be surprised if all had a significant amount. There does seem to be a large hybridization zone of wolves and coyotes in the North America going back quite some time, and wolves are famous for spreading their genes over large distances. > [@](#): > > [Molecular evolution of the dog family](http://www.idir.net/~wolf2dog/wayne2.htm) > > Wolf-like canids can travel great distances and overcome sizeable topographic obstacles. Gray wolves, for example, have been observed to disperse over a thousand kilometers during their lifetimes26. Because dispersing wolves may establish territories and reproduce, gene flow can occur over much larger distances than is usual for terrestrial vertebrates27. > > \ > > In eastern Canada, an area invaded b coyotes in the last 100 years, several genotypes identical or very similar to those found in coyotes were discovered in individuals phenotypically identified as gray wolves14 (genotypes with asterisks in Fig. 5). Wolves with these “coyote” genotypes increased in frequency toward the east, from 50% in Minnesota to 100% in Quebec (Fig. 6). The hypothesis advanced to explain this pattern was that coyotes and wolves had hybridized in areas of eastern Canada where wolves were rare and coyotes common. The interspecific transfer of mtDNA was asymmetric; none of the coyotes sampled had wolf-like genotypes although coyote genotypes were common in gray wolves. Because mtDNA is maternally inherited without recombination, this result reflects a mating asymmetry: male wolves mate with female coyotes, and their offspring backcross to wolves. > > \ > > Theory predicts that older hybrid zones between wolves and coyotes may be much larger than that in eastern Canada, and may be up to several thousand kilometers in width15,36. Accordingly, attention has > been focused on a potentially older and more extensive hybrid zone in the southern United States. > > \ > > Conceivably, hybridization between gray wolves and coyotes alone could explain the intermediate morphology of red wolves. To test this hypothesis, DNA was isolated from six museum skins of red wolves obtained from Five states in about 1910, a time before hybridization of red wolves and coyotes was thought to be common. Phylogenetic analysis of 398 bp of the cytochrome b gene showed that red wolves at that time did not have a distinct genotype; all six had genotypes classified with gray wolves or coyotes, a result consistent with a hybrid origin for the species15 (Fig. 4). Something similar could have happened in Eurasia with the wolf and the jackal, back when wolves were more numerous there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ligers-and-tigons-and-mules-thats-all/419337.md?page=1)