Open main menu

Wikipedia β

The liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion (Panthera leo) and a female tiger (Panthera tigris). The liger has parents in the same genus but of different species. The liger is distinct from the similar hybrid tigon, and is the largest of all known extant felines.[1][2] They enjoy swimming, which is a characteristic of tigers, and are very sociable like lions. Notably, ligers typically grow larger than either parent species, unlike tigons.[1][2][3]

Liger couple.jpg
Female (left) and male (right) ligers at Everland amusement park in South Korea.
Scientific classification e
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Suborder: Feliformia
Family: Felidae
Subfamily: Pantherinae
Genus: Panthera
Species: P. leo♂ × P. tigris



The history of lion-tiger hybrids dates to at least the early 19th century in India. In 1798, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844) made a colour plate of the offspring of a lion and a tiger. The portmanteau "liger" was coined by the 1930s.[4]






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."[6]

Size and growth

The liger is often believed to represent the largest known cat in the world.[1] Males reach a total length of 3 to 3.6 m,[7][8] meaning they are larger than large Siberian tiger males, who are themselves usually larger than the larger lion species.[9] Imprinted genes may be a factor contributing to the large size of ligers.[10] These are genes that may or may not be expressed on the parent they are inherited from, and that occasionally play a role in issues of hybrid growth. For example, in some dog breed crosses, genes that are expressed only when maternally-inherited cause the young to grow larger than is typical for either parent breed. This growth is not seen in the paternal breeds, as such genes are normally "counteracted" by genes inherited from the female of the appropriate breed.[11]

Other big cat hybrids can reach similar sizes; the litigon, a rare hybrid of a male lion and a female tigon, is roughly the same size as the liger, with a male named Cubanacan (at the Alipore Zoo in India) reaching 363 kg (800 lb).[12] The extreme rarity of these second-generation hybrids may make it difficult to ascertain whether they are larger or smaller, on average than the liger.

It is wrongly believed that ligers continue to grow throughout their lives due to hormonal issues.[citation needed] It may be that they simply grow far more during their growing years and take longer to reach their full adult size. Further growth in shoulder height and body length is not seen in ligers over 6 years old, as in both lions and tigers. Male ligers also have the same levels of testosterone on average as an adult male lion, yet are azoospermic in accordance with Haldane's rule. In addition, female ligers may also attain great size, weighing approximately 320 kg (705 lb) and reaching 3.05 m (10 ft) long on average, and are often fertile. In contrast, pumapards (hybrids between pumas and leopards) tend to exhibit dwarfism.

Ligers are about the same size as the prehistoric Smilodon populator and American lion.

Hercules the liger and his trainer Bhagavan Antle

Hercules the liger

Hercules, the largest non-obese liger, is recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest living cat on Earth, weighing 418.2 kg (922 lb).[13][14] Hercules was featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, Inside Edition, and in a Maxim article in 2005, when he was only three years old and already weighed 408.25 kg (900 lb). Hercules is healthy and is expected to live a long life. The cat's breeding is said to have been a complete accident.


Shasta, a ligress (female liger) was born at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on 14 May 1948 and died in 1972 at age 24.[15] Valley of the Kings animal sanctuary in Wisconsin had a male liger named Nook who weighed over 550 kg (1,213 lb), and died in 2007, at 21 years old.[2] Hobbs, a male liger at the Sierra Safari Zoo in Reno, Nevada, lived to almost 15 years of age before succumbing to liver failure and weighed in at 450 kg (992 lb).[16] This liger was born in 1943 and died in 1960. South Africa still has two ligers at its one zoo at Bloemfontein.[17]







Ligers have a tiger-like striped pattern that is very faint upon a lionesque 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 colour may be correspondingly tawny, sandy or golden. In common with tigers, their underparts are pale. The actual pattern and colour depend on which subspecies the parents were and on how the genes interact in the offspring.


Zoo policies

Keeping the two species separate has been standard procedure.[citation needed] However, ligers have occurred and do occur by accident in captivity. Several AZA zoos are reported to have ligers.[citation needed]

Coexistence of parental species

As with the tigon, the liger exists only in captivity, because the habitats of the parental species do not overlap. Historically, however, when the Asiatic lion was prolific, the territories of the lion and tiger did overlap in Eurasia, and there are legends of male lions mating with tigresses in the wilderness, or of ligers existing there.[3] The Asiatic lion had coexisted with the Bengal tiger in India, besides occurring in places where the Caspian tiger had been, like Iraq[20] and Persia.[21][22] In India, there is a plan to shift some lions from their current home of Gir Forest to Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary, which has some tigers, but it has not been implemented as of now.[23]

See also


  2. ^ a b c "The Liger - Meet the World's Largest Cat". Retrieved 2016-07-17. 
  3. ^ a b c Ligers Retrieved 4 September 2012.
  4. ^ "When the sire is a lion the result is termed a Liger, whilst the converse is a Tigon." Edward George Boulenger, World Natural History, B. T. Batsford ltd., 1937, p. 40.
  6. ^ Iles, G. At Home In The Zoo (1961).
  7. ^ Description of ligers at
  8. ^ Description of ligers at
  9. ^ Vratislav Mazák: Der Tiger. Westarp Wissenschaften; Auflage: 5 (April 2004), unveränd. Aufl. von 1983 ISBN 3-89432-759-6
  10. ^ "Growth dysplasia in hybrid big cats". Retrieved 23 June 2006. 
  12. ^ "Tigon". Retrieved 21 July 2010. 
  13. ^ Largest living cat
  14. ^ "Hercules, 922-Pound Liger, Is The World's Largest Living Cat (PHOTOS)". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 31 January 2015. 
  15. ^ Twila Van Leer (21 January 1996). "BABY LIGER BROUGHT NEW LIFE TO STRUGGLING ZOO". Deseret News. Retrieved 1 February 2015. 
  16. ^ Largest cat hybrid
  17. ^ "Liger: Recorded Ages of the Ligers". Retrieved 2013-12-10. 

Further reading


External links