Understanding what we are, part four

LIGER

The liger is a cross (a hybrid) between a male lion and a female tiger. It has also been known as a lion-tiger mule. A liger looks like a giant lion with diffused stripes. Some male ligers grow sparse manes. Like tigers, but unlike lions, ligers enjoy swimming. Unlike other hybrids, female ligers can reproduce.

A cross between a male tiger and a female lion is called a tigon.[1] This would have referred to the Gir Forest in India where the ranges of Asiatic Lions and Bengal Tigers overlap. Under exceptional circumstances it has been known for a tiger to be forced into ranges inhabited by the Asian lion, Panthera leo persica, which is the same genus as the tiger. Reports have been made of tigresses mating with lions in the wild and producing offspring known as ligers.


History
Cuvier reported a litter of three lion-tiger "mules" born in October 1824 in England, United Kingdom to an African lion and an Asiatic tigress owned by an itinerant exhibitor and animal dealer. The parents shared a den and had mated frequently during July 1823. The cubs were exhibited to his Majesty. Cuvier presented an engraving of 2 cubs at 3 months old and observed that they would probably reach maturity. He described them as being dirty-yellow or "blanket-colour" with darker tiger-like stripes on the body and spots on the head and on parts of the body. They had lion-like heads. These appear to be the first recorded ligers.

Two of the liger cubs were painted by Geoffrey St Hilaire (1772 - 1844). In 1825, G B Whittaker made an engraving of the 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 naive style.

Two liger cubs born in 1837 were exhibited to William IV and to his successor Victoria. On the 14th of December 1900 and on the 31st of May 1901, Carl Hagenbeck wrote to zoologist James Cossar Ewart with details and photographs of ligers born at the Hagenpark 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 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 little or no trace of mane. It is a huge and very powerful beast.[citation needed]

In 1935, four ligers from two litters, were reared in the Zoological Gardens of Bloemfontein, South Africa. 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 tigons 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.[citation needed]

Canberra Zoo in Australian had a liger which recently died (2006)


[edit] Large size

A liger and its trainer, October 2005.Ligers grow much larger than lions and even larger than the largest tigers, which can weigh in excess of 386 kg (850 lb). Some ligers have been estimated to weigh well over 550 kg (1200 lb),[2] over twice the size of a male lion; this is called growth dysplasia. The liger is the largest animal in the feline family Felidae.[3][4]

Imprinted genes may be a factor contributing to liger size.[5] These are genes that may or may not be expressed depending on the parent they are inherited from, and that occasionally play a role in issues of hybrid growth. For example, in some mice species crosses, genes that are expressed only when paternally-inherited cause the young to grow larger than is typical for either parent species. This growth is not seen in the paternal species, as such genes are normally "counteracted" by genes inherited from the female of the appropriate species.[6]

Another possible hypothesis is that the growth dysplasia results from the interaction between lion genes and tiger womb environment.[citation needed] 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. This is not upheld by behavioural evidence - despite being sterile, many male ligers become sexually mature and mate with females. In addition, female ligers also attain great size, weighing approximately 700 lb (320 kg) and reaching 10 feet (3.05 m) long on average, but are often fertile.


[edit] Longevity
Shasta, a ligress (female liger) was born at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on May 14th, 1948 and died in 1972 at age 24. The 1973 Guinness world records reported an 18 year old, 750 lb male liger living at Bloemfontein zoological gardens, South Africa in 1953.


[edit] Fertility
Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are fertile and can breed with tigers (resulting in ti-ligers) or to lions (resulting in li-ligers). The fertility of hybrid big cat females is well-documented across a number of different hybrids. This is in accordance with Haldane's rule: in hybrids of animals whose gender is determined by sex chromosomes, if one gender is absent, rare or sterile, it is the heterogametic sex (the one with two different sex chromosomes e.g. X and Y).

According to Wild Cats Of The World (1975) by 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 Zoo. The female cub, even though very delicate, was raised to adulthood.

More recently, a self-styled behavioural research program in the USA bred a female ti-liger called Lady Kali.


[edit] Vocalisation and behavior
Ligers may exhibit emotional or behavioural conflicts due to their mixed ancestry.

They inherit different or mixed vocabularies (tigers "chuff", lions roar).

They may inherit conflicting behavioral traits from the parent species. Ligers may exhibit conflicts between the social habits of the lion and the solitary habits of the tiger. Their lion heritage wants them to form social groups, but their tiger heritage urges them to be intolerant of company. Opponents of deliberate hybridization say this causes confusion and depression for the animals, especially after sexual maturity. How much of their behaviour is due to conflicting instincts and how much is due to abnormal hormones or the stress of captive conditions is not fully known.[7]


[edit] Colors
Ligers have a tiger-like striping pattern on a lion-like tawny background. In addition they may inherit rosettes 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 tigers 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 would require both a melanistic tiger and a melanistic lion as parents. Very few melanistic tigers 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. A hypothetical procedure to breed black ligers is explained here. The blue or Maltese tiger is now unlikely to exist, making grey or blue ligers an impossibility. It is not impossible for a liger to be white, but it is very rare...


[edit] Zoo policies
According to the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, accredited zoos frown on the practice of mixing two different species and have never bred ligers. Keeping the two species separate has always been standard procedure.[8]


[edit] In popular culture
There is a reference to the liger in the popular movie Napoleon Dynamite. The scene involves the main character, Napoleon, who is drawing a picture while having lunch in the school cafeteria. The dialogue from the scene is as follows:
Deb: What are you drawing?
Napoleon: A liger.
Deb: What's a liger?
Napoleon: It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed. Bred for its skills in magic.
The liger was famously ridiculed by American comedian/actor Eddie Murphy in his America wide stand-up tour of 1998 'I'm gonna make you laugh!'.
In Zoids, numerous Liger-type mecha exist. See Liger (disambiguation) for a list.
In Japan, there liger is referenced in the anime series Jushin Liger, where the are warriors called Ligers. Japanese wrestler Jushin "Thunder" Liger takes his name from the main character of the series.

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