Tigons and Ligers and Bears, oh my!
Feb 20, 2004 · peterb · 1 minute readWeb
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?