Who's Heard Of A Liger?

[cosmichedgehog]

skater240 Posted: Nov 14 2003, 07:55 AM
If u havent heard of a liger i tell u what they are. They are a breed of big cats which has been cross bread with a tiger and a lion they are the biggest cats in the world they wouldnt be able to survie in the wild because they are so big and their appetite is enmous

CLICK HERE
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professorpaul Posted: Nov 14 2003, 08:31 AM
Basically true but slightly innacurate

These links will give you more info

CLICK HERE

CLICK HERE


Wally Posted: Nov 14 2003, 10:16 AM
Ligers.. we know these things by know.....
it is a popular subject I guess...

phantom Posted: Nov 14 2003, 11:30 AM
on a biological basis, a liger is specifically an offspring resulting from a male lion and a female tiger. The male's name comes first then the females. The tigon for example is a cross between a male tiger and a female lion.


Save_The_Mop Posted: Nov 14 2003, 12:02 PM
They wouldn't be able to survive in the wild anyways. The males are like 99% guaranteed to be sterile. I think there is only one case of two ligers/tigons ever giving birth. The mix wasn't ment to be, so the males are sterile to prevent spreading a potentialy bad gene. I personaly think they are cool, but they are just showy animals. Horrible for both the populations of tigers and lions. Tiger mothers and lion mothers should be raising their respective young. Ligers do nothing to help the population, so they are basicly lost causes. There are also such things as Li-Ligers or Ti-Tigons (As well as a bunch of other mixes) which are the young of a female liger/tigon that was bred with a male lion/tiger.


jwa1107 Posted: Nov 14 2003, 01:06 PM
we have enough problems with vanishing tigers
crossbreeding with lions or any other big cat is just not valuable, IMHO

J. Mand Posted: Nov 14 2003, 03:31 PM
Hybrids are mostly freaks of nature, but not as freaky as the ones who bred them. I will give these freaky Frankensteins a 2/10, their monsters a 6/10 and skater an 8/10 for sharing...

superlion Posted: Nov 14 2003, 03:41 PM
I agree with JWA. Breeding hybrids like that is a waste of the biological resources avaliable to the species.

professorpaul Posted: Nov 14 2003, 03:42 PM
As we are talking only of a game though,these creatures can only serve to enrich ZT still further;ZA has a liger,Zoo Tek a Tigon;who will attempt to make the other hybrids?

Invader Necro Posted: Nov 15 2003, 12:03 AM
I saw an actual liger. Beautiful animals. At the Wildlife Way Station you can see some live ligers.
skater240 Posted: Nov 15 2003, 04:31 PM
i guess ur right they should be conitrating on tigers not cross breed.

Save_The_Mop Posted: Nov 16 2003, 12:43 PM
Lions too. Lots of people think they should be focusing on just elephants and rhinos,which is good, but african carnivores are on the decline too.

superlion Posted: Nov 16 2003, 01:32 PM
As African carnivores go, lions are actually doing very well. Especially when compared to african hunting dogs, but cheetahs and leopards are also doing poorly. African lions are actually getting too numerous in some places. Asiatic lions are a whole different story, though. Last I heard there were under 1000 on them... all in little Gir Forest...

skater240 Posted: Nov 17 2003, 02:58 AM
its acutally 500 of them left

robbieb Posted: Nov 17 2003, 08:59 PM
i dont think its that low yet but im sure its getting there and this is what i think why not introduce african lions genes into there pouplation it will give strong genitic lines and help with the fact the lions are becomingh smaller and weaker even though they wont be 100% pure they will atleast be living (i get tjhis idea from the florida panther after extream hunting the texas cougar was introduced to get the numbers and genitic diversity up)

superlion Posted: Nov 17 2003, 09:10 PM
500 should be a big enough population not to have too many actual genetic problems... and since the lion populations between sub-saharan africa and India have been separate fo SO long, I don't think it's a good idea. Plus I do believe the population in India is actually doing *too* well for the preserve they are on - to the point where there's too many and they're going off the preserve and attacking humans and livestock. So I don't think the African lion idea is a good one.


phantom Posted: Nov 18 2003, 12:28 AM
Superlion is right. Currently there is enough genetic variability to support and advance the Indian lion population. As for crossing the two subspecies, it's not the best idea. the animnals live in enitirely different habitats, the prey is different and so on. Cross breeding would weaken both populations. Actually, recently zoos have been trying to breed African lions that are taken from the wild only. Right now they are trying to strengthen the Afr. lion population. My local zoo recently bred two lions that were born in the wild and we had 4 cubs this summer. The emphasis is shifted heavily into breeding wild Afr. lions only. Robbieb does bring up a good point in cross breeding among cougar populations and the florida panther. this cross breeding is successful because the cougars have shown extraordinary adaptibilty to all sorts of different habitats and the prey is primarily the same in each habitat(deer). only time and nature can tell what will happen to all these felines...

This post has been edited by phantom on Nov 18 2003, 12:30 AM


professorpaul Posted: Nov 18 2003, 01:54 AM
Many Zoos are also back crossing some of the essentially mongrel types of lion that they have to bring back some of the characateristics of endangered subspecies;Marwell in the UK,for example,is trying to breed a strain of Barbary lions back

skater240 Posted: Nov 18 2003, 04:45 AM
also at longleat they are trying to breed wolfs so they can make a better poplation

jwa1107 Posted: Nov 18 2003, 10:14 AM
um, wolf breeding programs have been ongoing for quite some time
AZA has 3 SSPs & PMPs for endangered wolves

if you are referring to the release of endangered wolves back into the wild,
most of those program have re-emerged within the last decade

phantom Posted: Nov 18 2003, 10:44 AM
My local zoo in Colorado Springs has a SSP with the Mexican Grey Wolf. We had a good breeding population until the alpha female passed away. Then the other young males staged a coup and took over control from the breeding male. They hope to obtain another female soon and try to breed her this spring with the new dominant male. Some of the wolves born in our zoo have been successfully released into the wild and one of the released feamles has already given birth in the wild as well.

Juggernaut Posted: Nov 18 2003, 11:24 AM
Gee I wonder who hasn't heard of a liger or a tigon after being here and at Zoo Admin? When i first heard of these I had just been asking my mom what it meant by having a donkey and a horse mate it made something called either a hinny or a mule. Then she started going off on a long lecture about genetics when I'm still 6 and still think the stork brings babies (ok that was a lie but i'd rather not explain where I thought babies came from ). Eventually she mentioned something about a liger and when i asked what that was she said it was a cross between a tiger and a lion (which i thought was funny since my last name is close to the spelling of "lions" but is one letter off ). that's where i first heard of a liger but when i first saw one I was rather disapointed. It look like any lioness. It did have a tinge of stiping but that was barely noticable. I was rather sad that it didn't look any wierder .

skater240 Posted: Nov 19 2003, 06:24 AM
i reckon the tigon looks better than the liger

FireTigress Posted: Nov 21 2003, 04:03 PM
Anyone who says a liger is nothing special, looks just like a lioness has obviously never seen a true Liger. I volunteer at a wildlife sanctuary and we have a male liger named Rocky. I am attaching a picutre of him. He is approx. 900lbs, about 10ft when he stands on his hind legs and when he gets POed, lets just say I have seen full grown men jump. You don't know scary till you've had 900lbs of roaring cat come down on you with nothing but a chain link fence between you. A liger is like nothing else and there is no way a tigon is better. Im sorry if I've offeneded anyone but you have to stick up for your buddies when need be.

CLICK HERE

P.S. The reason a liger couldn't survive in the wild isn't because they're to big and can't find enough to eat or because they're sterile its because they could never exsist in the wild to begin with. There isn't anywhere that lions and tigers teritory overlap.

Save_The_Mop Posted: Nov 21 2003, 04:11 PM
Rocky looks like a beautiful cat, FireTigress. It's too bad people just breed them for looks, and don't care about the well being of tiger genes . I already mentioned that they were sterile, by the way.

robbieb Posted: Nov 21 2003, 05:43 PM
QUOTE (FireTigress @ Nov 21 2003, 05:03 PM)
P.S. The reason a liger couldn't survive in the wild isn't because they're to big and can't find enough to eat or because they're sterile its because they could never exsist in the wild to begin with. There isn't anywhere that lions and tigers teritory overlap.


actualy the asiatic lion and the bengal tiger do live in the same area in india but natural alienation between the spicies is whatkeeps them apart its like a lion and a leopard in africa see each other as enimies naturaly

robbieb Posted: Nov 21 2003, 05:45 PM
QUOTE (Save_The_Mop @ Nov 21 2003, 05:11 PM)
I already mentioned that they were sterile, by the way.


there not sterial a liger or a tigon can reproduce it has happened befor and im sure it can happen again

Save_The_Mop Posted: Nov 21 2003, 05:50 PM
Actualy like 99.9% are sterile. It was an extremely rare chance of it ever happening. I'm very surprized it even did. And that's just males, females can still reproduce, but only with male lions or tigers. I've heard there are no tigers by the Gir forest region (where Asian lions live) for hundreds of miles. I remember thinking "It would be cool if tigers lived there because it would mean that it would be the only wild place in the world where lions and tigers live together", but then I did some research and found out they don't live together.

superlion Posted: Nov 21 2003, 08:21 PM
Yeah, I do believe Gir forest is on the western side of India, and the tigers are concentrated closer to the Bay of Bengal on the other side... If I remember my geography correctly.

Mules aren't always sterile either... just a very large portion of the time...


J. Mand Posted: Nov 22 2003, 03:50 PM
Yet, I wouldn't loose too much sleep over this. Even if ligers can reproduce, nature still has Darwin's "Survival of the fittest" principle and ligers surely aren't the fittest here...

skater240 Posted: Nov 24 2003, 02:51 AM
thats true they couldnt be the fitest because they use to much energy.