# Were there ever any wild Asian ligers? And why not? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 21, 2008, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238 "2008-12-21T22:42:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BMax](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bmax/32/4267_2.png) [@BMax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMax)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238/1 "2008-12-21T22:42:06Z")
Lions and tigers are inter-fertile, and their pairing in captivity produces a [liger](http://www.soulcare.org/Creation/liger.jpg). The historical ranges of [lions](http://www.asiatic-lion.org/distrib.html) and [tigers](http://www.savethetigerfund.org/AM/Images/TigerNews/TCL/Current_Vs_historictigerrange.jpg) appear to have overlapped in parts of what is today Pakistan and India. So I’m wondering why they never interbred in the wild. I know they have different ‘cutlures’, the lion being a cursorial hunter of the plains, while the tiger most often is an ambush hunter of the forests, but would that keep wild animals from breeding? ---
**Author:** ![BMax](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bmax/32/4267_2.png) [@BMax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMax)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238/2 "2008-12-21T22:47:37Z")
It should read “wild asian ligers”, not “Wild asian igers” Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238/3 "2008-12-21T22:56:26Z")
A female tiger in heat roars to attract a male, and can be extremely hostile to other critters (and not especially gentle even to the male tiger). Male tigers are attracted by the right kind of roar, and are prepared to fight rivals. So there would be some serious hurdles to the odd male lion that happened to be in the vicinity. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238/4 "2008-12-21T23:27:33Z")
It probably could have happened but animals like to keep to their own kind. They have had a few reports of things like Polar Bears and Grizzlies mating in the wild, but that is very rare ---
**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:** [December 22, 2008, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238/5 "2008-12-22T01:26:49Z")
> [@BMax](#): > > So I’m wondering why they never interbred in the wild. I know they have different ‘cutlures’, the lion being a cursorial hunter of the plains, while the tiger most often is an ambush hunter of the forests, but would that keep wild animals from breeding? They are not only ecologically different, they have quite different social systems. Lions live in prides dominated by one or more males, while tigers are solitary. In lions, females mate mainly with the dominant males in prides. While females are capable of living solitarily, they are probably not going to do as well or raise cubs as successfully as members of a pride. Since a male tiger is never going to be a pride leader, he will have limited opportunity to sire cubs with a lioness. There are no doubt other behavioral differences in courtship behavior that would limit interbreeding in the wild, though offhand I am not familiar with them. While ligers and tigons, especially females, are not completely sterile, they are not a fertile as the parental species. Therefore any lion or tiger that was receptive to mating with the other species would on average have fewer offspring than one that only bred with its own kind, and hence would be selected against. It is this kind of selection that probably causes the evolution of behavioral barriers to mating between species. Ligers and tigons may have been produced occasionally in the wild when lions were more common in Asia, but mainly in circumstances where the parents were otherwise unable to find a mate of their own species (as is the case in captive-bred hybrids). ---
**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:** [December 22, 2008, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238/6 "2008-12-22T02:01:31Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > It probably could have happened but animals like to keep to their own kind. Interbreeding between different species isn’t particularly rare in the wild. The statement that “animals like to keep to their own kind” is not factually correct. The concept of a “species” is something we impose on nature, and nature is not so black and white as we like to think it is. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238/7 "2008-12-22T03:13:17Z")
Did anyone else expect to see [this](http://blog.peta.org/archives/The%20Liger.jpg) when they clicked on the ‘liger’ link in the OP? ---
**Author:** ![BMax](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bmax/32/4267_2.png) [@BMax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMax)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238/8 "2008-12-22T03:32:00Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Did anyone else expect to see [this](http://blog.peta.org/archives/The%20Liger.jpg) when they clicked on the ‘liger’ link in the OP? I considered linking to that one but decided to go for the real animal instead. If everything [here](http://www.messybeast.com/genetics/hybrid-cats.htm) and [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera_hybrid) is to be believed, there appears to have been some hybirds of large cats appearing in the wild. [According to Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera_hybrid#Leopard_and_tiger_hybrids) there have been leopard x tiger hybrids occur in the wild in india: > [@](#): > > There is anecdotal evidence in India of offspring resulting from leopard to tigress matings. The supposed hybrids are called “dogla”. Indian folklore claims that large male leopards sometimes mate with tigresses. A supposed dogla was reported in the early 1900s. Many reports are probably large leopards with abdominal striping or other striped shoulders and body of a tiger. One account stated, “On examining it, I found it to be a very old male hybrid. Its head and tail were purely those of a panther, but with the body, shoulders, and neck ruff of a tiger. The pattern was a combination of rosettes and stripes; the stripes were black, broad and long, though somewhat blurred and tended to break up into rosettes. The head was spotted. The stripes predominated over the rosettes.” The pelt of this hybrid, if it ever existed, was lost. It was supposedly larger than a leopard and, though male, it showed some feminization of features which might be expected in a sterile male hybrid. But nothing to indicate that ligers occured in nature. ---
**Author:** ![ShermanAter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ShermanAter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShermanAter)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-ever-any-wild-asian-ligers-and-why-not/478238/9 "2008-12-22T03:35:28Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Did anyone else expect to see [this](http://blog.peta.org/archives/The%20Liger.jpg) when they clicked on the ‘liger’ link in the OP? They’re pretty much my favorite animal.