Liger

Liger!
Liger! Burning bright!
Thanks to Paul Culnane for forwarding this to me
The 10ft Liger who’s still growing… He looks like something
from a prehistoric age or a fantastic creation from Hollywood. But Hercules
is very much living flesh and blood – as he proves every time he opens his gigantic
mouth to roar. Part lion, part tiger, he is not just a big cat but a huge one,
standing 10ft tall on his back legs. Called a liger, in reference to his crossbreed
parentage, he is the largest of all the cat species. On a typical day he will
devour 20lb of meat, usually beef or chicken, and is capable of eating 100lb
at a single setting. At just three years old, Hercules already weighs half a
ton.
He is the accidental result of two enormous big cats living close together at
the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, in Miami, Florida, and
already dwarfs both his parents. “Ligers are not something we planned on
having,” said institute owner Dr Bhagavan Antle.
“We have lions and tigers living together in large enclosures and at first
we had no idea how well one of the lion boys was getting along with a tiger
girl, then lo and behold we had a liger.”
The Liger is a 50mph runner… Not only that, but he likes to swim, a feat unheard
of among water-fearing lions. In the wild it is virtually impossible for lions
and tigers to mate. Not only are they enemies likely to kill one another, but
most lions are in Africa and most tigers in Asia. But incredible though he is,
Hercules is not unique. Ligers have been bred in captivity, deliberately and
accidentally, since shortly before World War II.
Today there are believed to be a handful of ligers around the world and a similar
number of tigons, the product of a tiger father and lion mother.
Tigons are smaller than ligers and take on more physical characteristics of
the tiger.

Liger and friends