Liger: Encyclopedia II - Liger - Recent ligers

Liger - Recent ligers

Hercules, one of the most widely-publicized ligers can be found at Parrot Jungle Island in Miami, Florida. Not only were European news outlets profiling the beast, but the American The Today Show, Good Morning America, and Anderson Cooper 360 all featured him as well in 2005.

A liger named Hobbs lives at Sierra Safari Zoo, Reno, Nevada, USA. He is the offspring of an African lion and a Bengal tigress. According to the zoo, "He roars like a lion and swims like a tiger. He's definitely all cat. He likes to play, and for all his incredible bulk he moves just as silently as any other cat". He is estimated to weigh about 450 kilograms (approximately 1000 pounds), about twice the average for male Siberian Tigers, the largest non-extinct, naturally-occurring member of family Felidae.

Shambala Preserve has a liger called Patrick who weighs an estimated 800 pounds (360 kg). He has a golden coat with slightly darker golden stripes and a modest mane that resembles an overdeveloped tiger ruff. Patrick was born in 1990 and lived at Deer Path Animal Haven, a roadside zoo in Illinois. When this closed in 1998, Patrick went to Shambala.

There is a four-year-old liger on display at Barefoot Landing in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, USA.

Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain, Georgia, USA, have been breeding ligers since 2000. As of October 2005 they had several adult ligers.

In September 1975, a tigress sharing a cage with a lion at a zoo in Osaka, Japan, gave birth to 3 cubs described as having tiger's heads and lion's bodies. Two died soon after birth and the third soon after the news reported.

A liger born in 2002 at Fuzhou, Fujian Province, lived for more than 100 days. In July 2004, a liger cub born in a wildlife park in Hainan, China died of respiratory failure 72 hours after birth. It had been born to the tigress "Huanhuan" and a lion called "Xiaoerhei". It was born underweight and its death was attributed to congenital respiratory failure. Huanhuan had rejected the cub and it had been suckled by a domestic dog that had just whelped in the hope of getting colostrum. The zoo plans to breed further ligers. On 6th December 2004, a Bengal tigress produced healthy liger cubs sired by an African lion. The Russian Information Agency Novosti claimed it to be the first liger ever produced from this combination (possibly the first in Russia). The parents lived in neighbouring caves in the Novosibirsk zoo and got used to each other. The female liger cub was named Zita and resembles her tigress mother with clear tiger stripes, but has a lion's background colour and many leonine features. Her brother remains with his parents in another Siberian zoo. In 2005, two tigons and three ligers were bred at the Shenzhen safari park, in southern China (near Hong Kong).

In April 2005, a liger (erroneously called a tigron) called Samil was born at the Italian Circus in Vigo, northwestern Spain. Samil is a cross between a female tiger and a lion and therefore is a liger.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Recent ligers", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki