Tigons and Ligers and Bears, oh my!

I knew about hinnies and mules, of course, but in the “everyone else probably already knew this but I just found out” department, today I learned that it is possible to crossbreed lions and tigers, creating ligers and tigons. I don’t know why this comes as a surprise to me. I knew that you could crossbreed an asian leopard cat and felis sylvestris catus and end up with a bengal cat, but I never envisioned that two cats as different as lions and tigers could crossbreed. I think they look amazingly cool, but I bet the mating procedure is fraught with peril.

Intriguingly, ligers and tigons (a liger has a male lion as a parent, and tigon has a male tiger as a parent) have very different characteristics, with ligers being prone to gigantism and tigons being prone to dwarfism.

Other interesting hybrids include breeding a serval to a caracal, a sheep to a goat, and a zebra to everything on the planet

Cats sleeping with dogs! Kids playing loud rock and roll music! WHERE IS IT ALL GOING TO END?