I told you before about the unusual pets some people have. They have lions, tigers and even bears as pet. But today we have different kind of pets, still from the felines mentioned and an addition from the equine family.
Ligers, Tigons, and Zorses, Oh My! is a book authored by Sutton Coleman. I was able to get myself a copy last week from a book sale store. Since I was a kid I was told about the fictions of the existence of Ligers - a hybrid interbred of a lion and a tiger. The television series Zoids also added to my perception that ligers are just a fiction because they have a liger robot that looks like a sabretooth, of which is already extinct. So when I saw the book, my childhood instinct eased in and I immediately grab it.
It seems like the fiction I have grown with is fake. The ligers are actually true! They are not just products of anyone's imagination. They really do exist. I learned that ligers are the biggest species of cats in the world. They can weigh for more than 1000 lbs! The most known liger of today is named Hercules, the one on the photo seen with his mother, he is born in 2002 in Jungle Island, Miami. He's so big! In 2005 he already weigh 900 lbs and in 2007 he weighed a whopping 1,050 lbs! More than double the usual weight of a normal lion or tiger.
Ligers are offspring of a male lion and a female tiger. In case that the paring is reverse and the male one is the tiger and partnered with a female lion, the offspring will be called a tigon, which is for some reason, smaller than a liger. Ligers appear to be tigers with faded stripes. Their are more like yellowish like those coat of a lioness and less orange than the tigers but male ligers do not have manes.
And then there is also what we call the star of all ponies. The zorse! In general all hybrids that descents from the zebra family are called zebroids. Zorse on the other hand is the product of crossbreeding a zebra stallion and a horse mare. If you will just see its appearance, you will surely be entertained. It looked pretty cool! It has the body of a horse or a pony and almost half of its body is marked with the zebra stripes. It's like two face! The other part is clean, the other part is painted.
I wonder when will I see these creatures personally haha. I wanna have a liger!
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