Firstly, when I was looking for this creature I found out that there are many different hybrids with these types of animals. There are crosses with leopards and jaguars as well. Here is a chart that might help easily explain these different crossbreeds:
These different species are quite interesting, but since it is called “ANIMAL of the Week” I will be talking about Ligers. They are quite interesting. Here are some pictures:
Liger is the offspring of a male lion and a female tigress, and is named after the combination of their names: l(ion)+(t)iger. It is bigger than either parent, 10 - 12 ft in length and the weight of up to 1,400 pounds - making it the biggest hybrid cat and, for many people, the most fascinating. Ligers vary in appearance depending on how the genes interact and on which subspecies of lion and tiger are bred together. In general, males grow sparse leonine manes and the facial ruff of a tiger. Males and females have spotted bellies and a striped back. They roar like lions and "chuff" like tigers. The females exhibit conflicting needs for sisterhood (pride-like activities of lionesses) and solitude (a tiger-like trait). For comparison, a male Amur tiger, the largest naturally occurring wild cat, weighs on average between 400 and 600 pounds, with the maximum weight recorded about 900 pounds. Nonetheless, this giant is able to reach the same speed as it’s parents: up to 50 miles per hour at short distances, and it walks as silently as them.
You can see the male liger called Hobbs, the son of an African lion and a Bengal tigress. This giant weighs about 1,100 pounds, has a leonine mane and roars like his father, and, though he doesn’t chuff like his mother, he is fond of swimming, like her (all ligers have this trait and borrow it from their mothers tigresses). Lions don’t like to swim, and the leonine side of liger’s nature first makes it a little hard, for the owner, to persuade a liger that the water is useful, but the tiger side finally takes over). Also Hobbs likes to play. Where did Hobbs get spots? He inherited them from his daddy: lions do have spots in childhood and adolescence, but these disappear when the lion becomes adult, though on some lions spots get preserved even when they get mature. If Hobbs' mother were a white tiger then he could become a white liger, and if she were a golden liger then he could become a golden liger. Vice versa, if his father were a Barbary lion, then he could have a thicker and darker mane and perhaps a hair stripe along his belly.
Do ligers occur in the wild?
This is highly unlikely, because:
1) Lions and tigers live in absolutely different areas (almost all lions in Africa and all tigers in Asia). Yet about 200 lions live inthe Gir National Park and Lion Sanctuary in Bangladesh, India... but there is no even one tiger within 100 miles from this area.
2) If even they met, the tiger, being a very solitary cat, would be unwilling to join in with the lions who usually live in prides -- and almost all lionesses live in prides. Tigers avoid even other tigers, except when it is time for them to mate...But perhaps if a tigress would meet a non-pride lion (a lion who doesn't have a pride of lionesses), then a liger could occur in the wild? Then they would have cubs, similar to those shown below.
Ligers' life span is from 20 to 25 years. Lions also live up to this time; at least, the oldest known lion died at 26.
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******Note: Majority of this was copy and pasted from****** **http://ambassadors.net/archives/issue14/features3.htm **
*****************As well as the chart from*****************
******http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera_hybrid ******
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