Natural Environment Blog

A liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion and a female tiger. Ligers look a bit like a giant lion with faint stripes - stripes that are much more faint than a tiger’s stripes.

Note that a liger is produced only if the male lion mates with a female tiger. If a female lion mates with a male tiger, the result is a different animal - a tigon.

Ligers are the largest cats in the world - much larger than a lion or a tiger. In fact, they can grow to the size of both parents! Their skulls can be 40% larger than a lion’s or tigers.

Ligers are usually only bred in captivity. Lions and tigers rarely (if ever) mate in the wild. Because of this, ligers don’t have a scientific name. They do however, belong to the genus Panthera.

Ligers were first known to exist in England back in 1823. Today, there are many ligers in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries around the world.

While female ligers can reproduce, male ligers are known to be sterile. It has been said that male ligers have unstable genes and never reach puberty.

A Liger Called “Sinbad”

A liger by the name of Sinbad is one of the largest known ligers in the world. Sinbad weighs around 900 lbs, which is twice the size of a male lion. Here’s a short video of Sinbad and his trainer, Dr Bhagavan Antle:

Tags: hybrid, liger, tiger, tigon, wild cats

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• What is a Tigon?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Environmental Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.