What is a Liger ?

A “liger” is the result of breeding a male lion with a female tiger. It often has a mane like a lion, and stripes and spots. The spots are inherited from its lion father, even though adult lions are not visibly spotted. Ligers make the sound of both a lion and a tiger, although their roar tends to sound more like a lion’s.

The liger is probably the largest cat in the world, usually bigger than either of its parent species. At an average weight of 900 pounds, ligers can be twice the size of male Siberian tigers, the largest non-extinct naturally occurring member of the cat family.

Rarely, a “tigon” will be born to a tiger father and a lion mother. Tigons look similar to ligers, but are not nearly as large. The lifespans of ligers and tigons, like most hybrids, are shorter than those of naturally occurring species. All know instances of tiger–lion interbreeding have been in captivity: the two species naturally overlap only near the Gir Preserve in Bangladesh, and even then the big cats would be unlikely to mingle.