The Liger - What Is That?!

With the roar of a lion but the gentle purr of a tiger, I present to you…the Liger.

The Liger is the cross between a male lion and a female tiger, although ligers are never seen in the wild because of the fact that lions are from Africa and Tigers are from Asia, Ligers have been bred in captivity, either accidentally or on purpose, since a little before World War II.

So why have people never really heard about this giant of the feline world…well, because accredited zoos have strict rules about the mating of lions and tigers, it’s just something that they do not do. Some people might wonder whether bringing a liger in to the world is morally right; some call it a freak of nature and something that we humans should not mess with. Well I have a question, have you ever heard of the mule? That is all that a liger is…it is the same basic principle…mules are hybrids between horses and donkeys, ligers are hybrids between lions and tigers; is it morally right? That is something that every person will have to decide for himself…. you half to admit though, they are kind of cool.

The Liger is the king, he usually very at swimming and he can also run at over 50 mph. The liger has the golden yellow of the lion and the stripes of the tiger (although they don’t show as strongly as on the tiger) this beast has an average weight of up to 1000 pounds and they eat right around 50-100 pounds of meat at one meal!

Although it is his huge size and his heavy build are the very reason why such a creature could never survive in the wild….lions hunt together as a highly cooperative group, they ambush their prey and bring it down with the high efficiency of a pure killing machine….even with all that they have going for them it only gives them a 25% success rate, why? Lions can run fast but they can only keep it up for a few minutes at best, their prey however, has much better stamina, allowing them to get away...escaping when they were right on death’s door. A liger is much bigger then a lion and even though he can run very fast he does not posses the stamina necessary to move his bulk at a high enough speed for a long enough time to be able to catch and bring down an animal.

The size of the ligers are probably because of imprinted genes, even though these genes may or may not be expressed depending on which parent that the liger inherited them from, these genes play a vital role in the problem of hybrid growth.

There is one popular hypothesis that states that because the male liger is sterile, he remains in the phase of growth that all felines have before they reach puberty. This might not be true however because the female liger can reach sizes that are as big as the male liger, the only difference is that she is fertile and can have babies…the babies that come from the union of a female liger and a tiger are called ti-ligers and the results of a female liger mating to a male lion are called li-ligers.

You would think that they would come up with a different name for these animals, I mean come on, these are giant beasts that demand respect, they at least deserve a name that is worthy of them, not li-liger…

Everybody knows that there is such a thing as a white tiger…but the real question is if there is such a thing as a white liger? Well, they have crossed white tigers with lions and the result is a very pale liger, but he is not white. The only thing needed to produce a truly white liger is to cross a white tiger with a white lion, the only problem is that white lions are extremely rare. Although it is not impossible to get a pure white liger, it is almost impossible.

The liger is the giant of the feline world, nothing can surpass the might and majesty of this creature; he is without a doubt a true "king of the beasts".