A hybrid cross between a lion and a tigress. Ligers and Tigons: who is who? mental health issues

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Zoos and traveling menageries once bred exotic big cat hybrids to attract the public in the same way that small cat hybrids (Bengal, Chausie, etc.) are now bred as pets. In nature, hybrids are unlikely. Where different species of big cats have overlapping territories, they have distinct lifestyles and are rarely seen. If they meet, a conflict is more likely than a love relationship. For deliberate breeding of hybrids, cat-parents are raised together to overcome the natural hostility between their species. Many hybrids are obtained by chance, when cats of different species are kept together for convenience; workers don't think cats can - and even will - mate. The urge to mate can be so strong that they will mate with each other even if no partners of their own species are available.

The belief that big cats readily mate and produce all types of hybrid offspring can be found in the writings of the Roman author Pliny, in Historia Naturalise. Pliny described the lustful and competitive nature of lions. Because many species must come to a single watering hole, there is the possibility of mating between species, resulting in "a wide variety of hybrids". In The Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants,1 Charles Darwin wrote: "Many species of Felidae were bred in various wandering menageries, kept together despite being from different climatic zones. Mr. Bartlett, Director of the Zoological Gardens remarks that the lion seems to be able to breed more frequently and bring forth offspring at an earlier age than other species of the family He added that the tiger rarely breeds;" but there are a few well-documented cases of tigresses mating with lions. "It may seem surprising that many animals, when restricted, combine with other species and produce hybrids just as easily—and sometimes even more easily—than with their own species."

Quite unusual in hybrid animals, female big cat hybrids are usually fertile, while males are most often sterile. The same is seen in small cat hybrids, such as the Asian leopard cat/domestic cat hybrid, where F1 (first generation) males are sterile. Thanks to conservation efforts, intentional crossbreeding is prohibited in most zoos. But it still happens in private collections, behavior/reproduction research institutes and as part of attempts to breed domestic big cats. Loopholes in many laws make it illegal for your own lions, tigers or leopards, but legal for your own hybrids! Although ligers2 and tigeon3 are the best-known hybrids, lions are more closely related to jaguars and leopards than to tigers.

Tigeon (tigrolion, tiglon, tigron) - Panthera tigreo

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scientific classification
Kingdom: Animals
Type: Chordates
Class: Mammals
Order: Carnivores
Family: Feline
Genus: Panther
Species: Tigrolev
Latin name Panthera tigreo

The most common hybrid in captivity is a cross between a male tiger and a female lioness, called a tiger. Tigers and lions are genetically very close, their separation occurred relatively recently (in terms of the history of the development of the Feline family).

Males obtained as a result of such crossing are usually sterile, but females can mate with both a lion and a tiger, forming in turn new hybrids with a predominance of lion or tiger blood. Cubs in such litters are always larger than their parents (some tigers reach a mass of 450 kg). They carry the signs of both parents - a dark tone of color, an orange mane (short and less dense), stripes that are paler than those of tigers, and a brightened muzzle. Females and many male hybrids lack a mane.

Liger (liger) - Panthera leogris

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scientific classification
Kingdom: Animals
Type: Chordates
Class: Mammals
Order: Carnivores
Family: Feline
Genus: Panther
Species: Liger
Latin name Panthera leogris

A liger is a cross between a male lion and a female tiger, while a tigrolev is a cross between a male tiger and a female lion. Ligers are the largest of the cat family in the world. Tigerlions, on the other hand, tend to be dwarfed and are usually smaller than their parents. Male ligers and tigers are sterile, while females can sometimes bear offspring. In the American Institute of Protected and Rare Species in Miami, for example, lives a liger named Hercules, whose height is 3 m. Russian zoos also have their own ligers. So in the winter of 2004, two "ligers" were born in the Novosibirsk Zoo.

A liger is a hybrid of a lion and a tigress, and a tigon, or tigrolev, on the contrary, is a cross between a tiger and a lioness. Lions live in the African savannah, while tigers live in the Indian jungle and the Far East. Under natural conditions, these animals are never found, but in zoos and circuses, kittens of different species are sometimes placed in one cage due to lack of space. Kids grow up together, play, eat from the same bowl, and then they become adults and have children. Offspring are obtained from one or two out of 100 mixed pairs, and they are more like their fathers.

I invite you to learn more about them...

Ligers are more common than tigons. Their coat is orange-gold with soft stripes on the sides and back and spots on the belly. These spots are from the father, because the cubs themselves are born spotted. Sometimes a male liger even grows a mane, but not as big as a lion's. In addition, they, like their tiger mothers, love and know how to swim, and the growl, on the contrary, is more like a lion's. Ligers are the largest cats on earth. Standing on their hind legs, they reach 4 meters in height and weigh more than 300 kilograms. The largest liger named Hercules, weighing as much as two lions, lives in Jungle Island Park in Miami. Unlike females, male ligers are usually sterile and therefore should not be bred.

Tygons are very rare, with only a few living specimens known. This is explained by the fact that tigers do not interbreed well with lionesses, they apparently do not perceive the mating behavior of lionesses as a call for mating. In addition, tigons are often born prematurely and die. Despite their rarity, tigons are of less interest because they are not as impressive in size as ligers. They are even smaller than their parents. Outwardly, tigons look like ligers. They are orange in color, with stripes and spots, males have a mane, but very small. Tigons, when roaring, make both lion and tiger sounds. Male tigons, like ligers, do not bear offspring, and females are fertile and can interbreed with lions and tigers. It is known, for example, that now two tigons live in the Australian National Zoo, the Shenzhen Safari Park in South China also owns tigons and three more ligers.

One of the largest cats in the world, a liger named Hercules, lives in Miami's Jungle Island Animal Park. Kotyara, whose weight is more than 400 kilograms, is officially listed in the Guinness Book of Records, and his closest competitors are far from him!

Interestingly, Hercules got into the Guinness Book of Records already in 2006. When representatives of the Guinness Book of Records measured and weighed the liger, it turned out that Hercules weighed 410 kilograms. The length of the cat was 3.6 meters, and the height at the withers was 186 cm. If Hercules stands on his hind legs, then his height will be as much as 3.7 meters! Wow kitten!

Despite its impressive size, Hercules remains very agile and agile. So, the liger is able to pick up speed up to 90 km / h!

The length of a liger can reach three to four or more meters, and the weight exceeds three hundred kilograms (this is a third more than that of large lions). The largest living liger, Hercules, weighs 400 kg, which is twice as heavy as the average lion.

In 1973, the Guinness Book of Records recorded a 798 kg liger living in Bloemfontein Zoological Gardens in South Africa.

Superbeast.

The eccentricity of ligers is of legitimate interest: the most famous liger in the world, Hercules, gives performances every day at the Jungle Island amusement park in Miami and breaks applause every day. Hercules weighs 410 kilograms - this is one hundred domestic cats, or two large lions, or five or six people (the carrying capacity of a standard elevator). Standing on its hind legs, Hercules stretches almost into a four-meter giant.

Zita is still young, she is seven years old, but she is already a little more than a mature lion living in a nearby enclosure. The gigantism of ligers is a normal consequence of heterosis (hybrid strength). Heterosis is a powerful development of first-generation hybrids obtained by crossing different pure species or different varieties of the same species. Cubs with such crossing are larger, stronger, more enduring or smarter than their parents. “Although they have been talking about heterosis at school for fifty years and everyone knows the examples of the persistent mule or the brilliant half-breed Pushkin, geneticists have not even come close to the mystery of the power of hybrids,” says Galina Sulimova, head of the Laboratory of Comparative Animal Genetics at the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. - For example, imagine a union: the wife is a full-blooded Nigerian, and the husband is Irish. With a probability of 90 percent, the children from this marriage will be very talented, smart, energetic, with a well-developed memory and imagination.

And this applies to all interethnic marriages, although here one cannot speak of hybrids proper: after all, a person is one species. If love breaks out between a lion and a tigress, different species, their cubs are born not only stronger and healthier, but also larger than their parents. It is clear that genes that were suppressed in pure species are activated in hybrids, but why this happens, what the molecular mechanism is, we do not yet know, we have developed only a couple of controversial theories to test.

The only thing that nature has deprived powerful hybrids is the ability to produce their own kind. Male ligers are sterile. Females can give birth to cubs from lions - li-ligers. Cases of the birth of cubs from tigers - tie ligers - have not been recorded: tigers are too small to mate with ligers. Female ligers can produce offspring primarily because the effect of hybrid vigor is not as shocking in them as in males. Zita is larger than the largest lion, but as huge as Hercules, she will never be.

Ligers: for and against.

The hybrid nature of ligers has drawn backlash from animal rights activists. Dr. Bhagawal Antle, the owner of Hercules and other ligers raised at the Institute of Rare and Endangered Species in South Carolina, is often accused of "cruel use of sick animals for self-promotion."

Animal Media has released a number of short films in which it is categorically stated that ligers are sick, crippled animals suffering from cancer, arthritis, depression, neurological disorders, ligers die early, and tigresses cannot give birth to ligers without a caesarean section and do not survive during childbirth due to gigantic babies. Diseases of ligers are caused, according to the films, by hybridization. “Ligers are bred simply because the crowd always wants spectacle,” says one video. “A person is ready to pay well, just to see something new that goes beyond the limits of gray everyday life.”

In the zoo of Novosibirsk, Russia, unique animals were born - liligers - a hybrid of a liger (a hybrid of a lion and a tigress) and a lion.

The zoo in Novosibirsk is home to a unique animal - the liliger. This breed of big cats, whose father is a lion father, and the mother is a cross between a lion and a tiger - a liger.

The first liliger was born at the zoo last year, and most recently, three liligers and all girls were born from the second litter.

The liligers were born in May of this year and have grown quite a lot. They are already posing for zoo visitors, showing off their cute and clumsy moves.

Their mother, Zita, was born at the zoo in 2004. Their father is the African lion Samson.

Such an aggressive reaction is generally understandable. At first, hybrids of large cats were born by chance, like Zita, in cramped menageries and circuses. But when the trainers noticed a tremendous interest in unusual creatures, ligers really began to be bred on purpose. In European circuses, hybrid cats were called money makers - "money making animals".

“Yes, ligers were bred artificially, and shows with ligers are practiced today. But in Animal Media films gross mistakes are made and facts are asserted that contradict the real laws of biology, - says Roza Solovieva. - Hybrids from different pure lines are always healthy and strong; humans have been using heterosis for hundreds of years in agriculture to produce more productive plant and animal varieties. I have never seen a healthier and more cheerful cat than Zita.” “Ligers are born small, weigh half a kilogram and fit in the palm of your hand,” writes Dr. Antle on his blog. - The mass of the cub is less than a percent of the mass of the tigress, which, without any caesarean section, easily gives birth to ligers. For comparison: the mass of the baby reaches five to ten percent of the mass of the mother, and healthy women give new life to the world without surgical intervention.

Zoo Star Zita- a kind and cheerful cat. She looks at strangers with surprise and interest, and meets those with whom she often sees almost with a smile. On the day, Zita eats 8 kilograms of meat, so she looks super-fed.

Zita's habits are mixed: she loves communication and attention, like lions, but growls and marks her territory like tigresses - female tigers are not visible in the forests, they need a strong smell and a loud voice to attract males, unlike lionesses, who are already clearly visible in the African savannas.

A rare liger that does not exist in the wild has become a heraldic animal: the Zaeltsovsky district of Novosibirsk chose it in honor of Zita. Schoolchildren from Novosibirsk write compositions about Zita, and one of the Palaces of children's creativity in the city is called Ligr.

A liger is a hybrid between a male lion and a female tigress. Therefore, his parents belong to the same biological genus of panthers, but different species. Outwardly, it differs markedly from its opposite hybrid, the tiger. It is the largest representative of the cat family that currently exists. It looks like a giant lion with blurry stripes.

Appearance of ligers

Male ligers, with rare exceptions, have almost no mane, but unlike lions, ligers can and love to swim. Another feature of ligers is that female ligers (ligers) can produce offspring, which is unusual for feline hybrids. The unusual gigantism of ligers is likely due to genomic imprinting. Genes that accelerate the growth of the fetus and placenta during genomic imprinting usually work on the paternal chromosome, and genes that inhibit the growth of the embryo - on the maternal one. It is assumed that in polygamous species (including lions, in which a female can mate with several males), the effect of paternal genes is more pronounced than in monogamous species (which include tigers). Ligers receive genes from the lion father that actively promote the growth of offspring, while the genes that inhibit the growth of offspring from the tiger mother are weaker. In the tiger father, growth-promoting genes are less active, and in the lioness mother, growth-inhibiting genes are more active, which work during the development of her offspring. This explains the fact that the liger is larger than the lion, and the tigrolev is smaller than the tiger.

A liger can reach a length of four meters or more, and weigh more than three hundred kilograms (this is a third more than that of large lions). The largest liger currently living in Miami Park, Hercules, has a weight of 408 kg, which is twice as heavy as the average lion.

He took the page of the Guinness Book of Records. His height is 183 centimeters, and his muzzle is 73 centimeters. Hercules is a truly unique liger, because he owes his existence only to the fact that his “mother” and “dad” were simply kept in the same enclosure. Perhaps, if not for this circumstance, Hercules would not have been destined to be born.

In 1973, the Guinness Book of Records recorded a 798 kg liger living in Bloemfontein Zoological Gardens in South Africa.

In the Valley of the Kings animal sanctuary in Wisconsin, USA, there lived a 550 kg liger named Nook, who died in 2007 at the age of 21.

Liger Arial

Ligers do not occur in nature mainly because lions and tigers have almost no chance of meeting in the wild: the modern range of the lion includes mainly central and southern Africa (although the last surviving population of Asiatic lions exists in India), while the tiger - exclusively Asian. Therefore, species crossing occurs when animals live in the same enclosure or cage for a long time (for example, in a zoo or circus), but only 1-2% of pairs give offspring, which is why there are no more than two dozen ligers in the world today.

According to scientists, artificial breeding takes place among these animals only because of geographical features. In ancient times, when the habitats of lions and tigers coincided, ligers were not something special in the wild and regularly updated their population. And only today we are seeing the lack of the ability to mate with lions and tigers in the wild.

In Russia, one liger is kept in the Novosibirsk Zoo, the other in the Lipetsk Zoo. Also, ligers can be seen at the performances of the Great Moscow State Circus (2009). One ligress named Marusya is kept in a mini-zoo at the Oktyabrsky sanatorium in Sochi (2012). Another liger settled in a mini-zoo near the Vladivostok-Nakhodka highway (2015).

On September 30, the Far East will host an ecological holiday - Tiger Day. The program of events in the zoos of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Vladivostok has already been announced. A little earlier, on September 24, the celebration will unfold at the Moscow Zoo, and a little later - on October 8, at the Krasnoyarsk Zoo. Zoovestnik.ru decided to prepare a gift for its dear readers. Today we publish material about hybrids in the cat family - from ligers and tigons.

Liger - a huge tiger with a mane

A liger is born from a tigress and a lion. The largest hybrid in the cat family, the liger reaches 3.5 meters in length. One of the naturalists of the early 20th century, L.Reisinger, reported that he saw a liger that weighed as much as both of its parents.

The appearance of ligers varies depending on the interaction of genes. Ligers are dominated by paler stripes and manes develop later than lions, according to the AP. The outlines of the body of ligers often resemble those of a tiger, but the shape of the head is that of a lion. The sounds that ligers make are simultaneously reminiscent of the growl of lions and the low-frequency sharp "hum" of tigers. Ligers sometimes get bored alone, as if paying tribute to the genetic memories of the pride, and sometimes they prefer to live separately, like tigresses.

Ligers do not have a scientific name, but their history is recorded in the Dublin Natural Science Museum. Researchers believe that as a result of crossing there is a "return" to the proportions of the cave lion. Empirically, it was found that male ligers are sterile, but ligers are able to bear offspring from both lions and tigers. Now ligers are very popular in all zoos of the world, but ligers often attack people.

In Russia, the first ligers may have appeared in 2004 at the Novosibirsk Zoo (according to messybeast.com). In South Korea, in the Seoul Zoo, white ligers were bred.

Tigons - striped lions

The cub of a tiger and a lioness is called a tigon (tigron, tiglon, tigrolev). More like lions than tigers. Charles Darwin also wrote about tigons. In the Hagenbeck Zoo in the 19th century, tigers and lionesses were crossed (as well as bears, wolves and hyenas, but they did not get viable offspring). In 1985, India officially banned the crossing of lions and tigers.

Today, tigons are much rarer than ligers. Most likely, this is due to the mating behavior of males. A lion differs from a tiger in hypersexuality and is always ready to mate, but a tiger can miss behavioral signals from a lioness and miss the right moment. Tigons are much smaller than ligers, and therefore the former are not very spectacular exhibits. The tigons look like lions with pale stripes and a rather small mane. On the ears and paws, the stripes are more noticeable. Male tigons are sterile. Females bring offspring from tigers and lions. In Russia, there are no facts of the appearance of tigons known to the world press.

http://website/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1.jpghttp://website/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1-200x200.jpg 2012-09-11T09:01:08+00:00 Yuzene Animal humor Zoos of the world Editor column Export Ligers, Lions, Tygons, Tigers

On September 30, the Far East will host an ecological holiday - Tiger Day. The program of events in the zoos of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Vladivostok has already been announced. A little earlier, on September 24, the celebration will unfold at the Moscow Zoo, and a little later, on October 8, at the Krasnoyarsk Zoo. Zoovestnik.ru decided to prepare a gift for its dear readers. Today we are publishing...