The
liger is a hybrid cross between a male
lionThe Lion is one of four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
(
Panthera leo) and a tigress (
Panthera tigris), hence has parents with the same
genusIn biology, a genus is a taxonomic unit used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The term comes from Latin genus "descent, family, type, gender" , cognate with – genos, "race, stock, kin" ..In addition, genus is a taxonomic rank in the hierarchy In biology, a genus (plural:...
but of different
speciesIn biology, a species is:* a taxonomic rank or* a unit at that rank ....
. It is distinct from the similar hybrid
tigonA tigon, tion or tigron is a hybrid cross between a male tiger and a lioness , hence has parents with the same genus but of different species. The tigon is not currently as common as the converse hybrid, the liger; however, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tigons were more common than...
. It is the largest of all cats and extant
felinesFelidae is the biological family of the cats; a member of this family is called a felid. Felids are the strictest carnivores of the sixteen mammal families in the order Carnivora...
.
Ligers borrow positive characteristics from both species. Ligers enjoy swimming which is a characteristic of tigers and are very sociable like lions. However ligers are often faced with a variety of health risks and other issues. Ligers only exist in captivity because lions and tigers live in different regions and would never breed voluntarily in the wild. Ligers are larger than both their parents which is usually dangerous to the pregnant tigress and may make it necessary for offspring to be delivered via
caesarean sectionA Caesarean section , also known as C-section or Caesar, is a surgical procedure in which incisions are made through a mother's abdomen and uterus to deliver one or more babies...
. The liger often has a very limited life span as well as birth defects and other mutations.
The history of ligers dates to at least the early 19th century in
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.Asia is traditionally defined as part of the...
. In 1799,
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-HilaireÉtienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...
(1772–1844) made a colour plate of the offspring of a lion and a tiger.
In 1825, G.B. Whittaker made an engraving of liger cubs born in 1824. The parents and their three liger offspring are also depicted with their trainer in a 19th Century painting in the
naïve styleNaïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true....
.
Two liger cubs which had been born in 1837 were exhibited to
William IVWilliam IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death on 20 June 1837...
and to his successor
VictoriaVictoria was the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837, and the first Empress of India of the British Raj from 1 May 1876, until her death...
. On 14 December 1900 and on 31 May 1901,
Carl HagenbeckCarl Hagenbeck was a merchant of wild animals who supplied many European zoos, as well as P.T. Barnum. He is often considered the father of the modern zoo because he introduced "natural" animal enclosures that included recreations of animals' native habitats without bars...
wrote to zoologist
James Cossar EwartJames Cossar Ewart was a Scottish zoologist. He was the son of John Ewart, a joiner, and Jean Cossar....
with details and photographs of ligers born at the Hagenbeck's Tierpark in Hamburg in 1897.
In
Animal Life and the World of Nature (1902–1903), A.H. Bryden described Hagenbeck's "lion-tiger" hybrids:
It has remained for one of the most enterprising collectors and naturalists of our time, Mr Carl Hagenbeck, not only to breed, but to bring successfully to a healthy maturity, specimens of this rare alliance between those two great and formidable felidae, the lion and tiger. The illustrations will indicate sufficiently how fortunate Mr Hagenbeck has been in his efforts to produce these hybrids. The oldest and biggest of the animals shown is a hybrid born on the 11th May, 1897. This fine beast, now more than five years old, equals and even excels in his proportions a well-grown lion, measuring as he does from nose tip to tail 10 ft 2 inches in length, and standing only three inches less than 4 ft at the shoulder. A good big lion will weigh about 400 lb [...] the hybrid in question, weighing as it does no less than 467 lb, is certainly the superior of the most well-grown lions, whether wild-bred or born in a menagerie. This animal shows faint striping and mottling, and, in its characteristics, exhibits strong traces of both its parents. It has a somewhat lion-like head, and the tail is more like that of a lion than of a tiger. On the other hand, it has no trace of mane. It is a huge and very powerful beast.
In 1935, four ligers from two litters were reared in the Zoological Gardens of
BloemfonteinBloemfontein is the capital city of the Free State Province of South Africa as well as one of the nation's three capitals, the judicial capital. The city's Sesotho name is Mangaung, meaning "place of cheetahs" and became part of the Mangaung Local Municipality in 2000...
,
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland, while Lesotho is an independent country surrounded by South Africa.Modern...
. Three of them, a male and two females, were still living in 1953. The male weighed 750 lb. and stood a foot and a half taller than a full grown male lion at the shoulder.
Although ligers are more commonly found than
tigonA tigon, tion or tigron is a hybrid cross between a male tiger and a lioness , hence has parents with the same genus but of different species. The tigon is not currently as common as the converse hybrid, the liger; however, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tigons were more common than...
s today, in At Home In The Zoo (1961), Gerald Iles wrote "For the record I must say that I have never seen a liger, a hybrid obtained by crossing a lion with a tigress. They seem to be even rarer than tigons."
Size and growth
The liger is the largest
big catThe term big cat - which is not a biological classification - is used informally to distinguish the larger cat species from smaller ones. One definition of "big cat" includes the four members of the genus Panthera: the tiger, lion, jaguar, and leopard. Members of this genus are the only cats able...
in the world.
ImprintedGenomic imprinting is a genetic phenomenon by which certain genes are expressed in a parent-of-origin-specific manner. It is an inheritance process independent of the classical Mendelian inheritance. Imprinted genes are either expressed only from the allele inherited from the mother , or in other...
genes may be a factor contributing to huge
liger size. These are genes that may or may not be expressed on the parent they are inherited from, and that occasionally play a role in issues of hybrid growth. For example, in some dog breed crosses, genes that are expressed only when maternally-inherited cause the young to grow larger than is typical for either parent breed. This growth is not seen in the paternal breeds, as such genes are normally "counteracted" by genes inherited from the female of the appropriate breed.
The tiger produces a hormone that sets the fetal liger on a pattern of growth that does not end throughout its life. The hormonal hypothesis is that the cause of the male liger's growth is its sterility — essentially, the male liger remains in the pre-pubertal growth phase. Male ligers also have the same levels of testosterone on average as an adult male lion. In addition, female ligers also attain great size, weighing approximately and reaching long on average, and are often fertile. In contrast,
pumapardA pumapard is a hybrid of a Puma and a Leopard. Both male puma with female leopard and male leopard with female puma pairings have produced offspring...
s (hybrids between pumas and
leopardThe leopard , Panthera pardus, is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera; the other three being the tiger, lion and jaguar...
s) tend to exhibit
dwarfismDwarfism is a medical disorder, the term being used to describe a person of short stature. It is sometimes defined as a person with an adult height under 4 feet 10 inches...
.
Interestingly enough, ligers are the same size as the prehistoric
American LionThe American lion also known as the North American lion or American cave lion, is an extinct feline of the family Felidae, endemic to North America during the Pleistocene epoch , existing for approximately .It was one of the largest subspecies of cat ever to have existed, and the largest lion in...
.
Hercules and Sinbad
Jungle IslandJungle Island is an interactive animal theme park in the City of Miami, Florida, United States. It was originally Parrot Jungle and moved from the village of Pinecrest to its present location on Watson Island in the City of Miami and renamed as Parrot Jungle Island...
in Miami is home to a liger named Hercules, the largest non-obese liger, who is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest living cat on Earth, weighing in at . Hercules was also featured on the Today Show,
Good Morning AmericaGood Morning America is an American news Morning show and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network, debuting on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour, available exclusively on ABC News Now, was introduced in 2007...
, Anderson Cooper 360,
Inside EditionInside Edition is a syndicated news program, on the air since January 9, 1989. It was originally similar to the programs Hard Copy and A Current Affair, but now more closely resembles Entertainment Tonight or The Insider. It was created by John Tomlin and Bob Young for King World Productions Inside...
and in a Maxim magazine article in 2005, when he was only 3 years old and already weighed at the time. Hercules seems completely healthy and is expected to live a long life. The cat's breeding is said to have been a complete accident.
Sinbad, another Liger, was shown on the National Geographic Channel. Sinbad was reported to have the exact weight of Hercules. Hercules and Sinbad belong to the T.I.G.E.R.S. family of animal ambassadors, who put on the "Wild Encounters."
Longevity
Shasta, a ligress (female liger) was born at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on May 14, 1948 and died in 1972 at age 24. The 1973 Guinness world records reported an 18-year-old, male liger living at Bloemfontein zoological gardens, South Africa, in 1888. Valley of the Kings animal sanctuary in
WisconsinWisconsin is one of the fifty U.S. states. Located in the north-central United States, Wisconsin is considered part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the...
had a male liger named Nook who weighed around , and died in 2007, at 21 years old.
Fertility
The fertility of hybrid big cat females is well-documented across a number of different hybrids. This is in accordance with
Haldane's ruleHaldane's rule relating to hybrids of species and extended to speciation in evolutionary theory is easily stated:It was originally formulated in 1922 by the British evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane...
: in hybrids of animals whose sex is determined by sex chromosomes, if one sex is absent, rare or sterile, it is the heterogametic sex (the one with two different sex chromosomes e.g.
XThe X chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes in many animal species, including mammals . It is a part of the XY sex-determination system and X0 sex-determination system...
and
YThe Y chromosome is the sex-determining chromosome in most mammals, including humans. In mammals, it contains the gene SRY, which triggers testis development, thus determining sex. The human Y chromosome is composed of about 60 million base pairs.- Overview :...
).
According to Wild Cats of the World (1975) by C. A. W. Guggisberg, ligers and tigons were long thought to be sterile: In 1943, however, a fifteen-year-old hybrid between a lion and an 'Island' tiger was successfully mated with a lion at the
Munich Hellabrunn ZooTierpark Hellabrunn is the name of the zoological garden in the Bavarian capital Munich.The 36 hectare park is situated on the right bank of the river Isar in the southern part of Munich, near the quarter of Thalkirchen...
. The female cub, though of delicate health, was raised to adulthood.
Colours
Ligers have a tiger-like striping pattern on a lion-like tawny background. In addition they may inherit
rosettesA rosette is a rose-like marking or formation found on the fur and skin of some animals, particularly cats of the genus felidae. Rosettes are used to camouflage the animal, either as a defense mechanism or as a stalking tool. Predators use their rosettes to simulate the different shifting of...
from the lion parent (lion cubs are rosetted and some adults retain faint markings). These markings may be black, dark brown or sandy. The background color may be correspondingly tawny, sandy or golden. In common with tigers, their underparts are pale. The actual pattern and color depends on which subspecies the parents were and on the way in which the genes interact in the offspring.
White tigerA white tiger is a tiger with a recessive gene that creates the pale coloration. Another genetic characteristic makes the stripes of the tiger very pale; white tigers of this type are called snow-white or "pure white". This occurs when a tiger inherits two copies of the recessive gene for the paler...
s have been crossed with lions to produce "white" (actually pale golden) ligers. In theory white tigers could be crossed with white lions to produce white, very pale or even stripeless ligers. A black liger does not actually exist. Very few
melanistic tigersA black tiger is a rare color variant of the tiger and is not a distinct species or geographic subspecies. There are unconfirmed reports and one painting of pure black non-striped tigers , but no physical evidence. What was thought to be a black tiger was either a black jaguar or a black leopard. ...
have ever been recorded, most being due to excessive markings (pseudo-melanism or abundism) rather than true melanism. No reports of black lions have ever been substantiated. The blue or
Maltese TigerThe Maltese tiger, or blue tiger, is a suspected coloration morph of a tiger, reported mostly from the Fujian Province of China. It is said to have bluish fur with dark grey stripes. The term "Maltese" comes from domestic cat terminology for blue fur, and refers to the slate grey coloration...
is now unlikely to exist, making gray or blue ligers an impossibility. It is not impossible for a liger to be white, but it is very rare.
Zoo policies
Keeping the two species separate has always been standard procedure. However, ligers have occurred and do occur by accident in captivity. Several
AZAright|250pxThe Association of Zoos and Aquariums is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of zoos and aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation...
zoos are reported to have ligers.
Further reading
- Peters, G. "Comparative Investigation of Vocalisation in Several Felids" published in German in Spixiana-Supplement, 1978; (1): 1-206.
- Courtney, N. The Tiger, Symbol of Freedom. Quartet Books, London, 1980.
External links
- Liger video youtube
- Information About Hercules, The Largest Cat On Earth
- Shasta the Liger
- Hercules the Liger at Snopes.com
- More pictures of Hercules
- Hobbs at the Sierra Safari Zoo.
- Patrick at the Shambala Preserve
- Liger cubs at Noah's Ark Zoo, Grömitz
Grömitz is a municipality in the district of Ostholstein, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is situated on the Bay of Lübeck, approx. 35 km northeast of Lübeck, and 23 km east of Eutin.Grömitz is a settlement on the Baltic Sea...
, GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
(German)
- Hybrid Big Cats, pages http://www.messybeast.com/genetics/hybrid-cats.htm
- Patrick the Liger from National Geographic
- Liger Tribute
- Liger Video of Sinbad (900 pound liger)
- Liger Pictures Liger Pictures from the Animal Safari in Pine Mountain Georgia
- The Liger Exists
This article incorporates text from
messybeast.com, which is released under the GFDL.