It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and tiger mixed...bred for its skills in magic

[ET Awful]

On a typical day he will devour 200lb of meat, usually beef or chicken, and is capable of eating 100lb at a single setting. At just three years old, Hercules already weighs half a ton.
He is the unintentional result of two enormous big cats living close together at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, in Miami, Florida, and already dwarfs both his parents.
"Ligers are not something we planned on having," said institute owner Dr Bhagavan Antle. "We have lions and tigers living together in large enclosures and at first we had no idea how well one of the lion boys was getting along with a tiger girl, then lo and behold we had a liger." These two cats don't normally have the opportunity to breed in the wild, as most lions live in Africa and most tigers in Asia.
50mph runner...Not only that, but he likes to swim, a feat unheard of among water-fearing lions. In the wild it is virtually impossible for lions and tigers to mate. Not only are they enemies likely to kill one another. But incredible though he is, Hercules is not unique. Ligers have been bred in captivity, deliberately and accidentally, since shortly before World War II

Today there are believed to be a handful of ligers around the world and a similar number of tigons, the product of a tiger father and lion mother. Tigons are smaller than ligers and take on more physical characteristics of the tiger.











(yup, I've confirmed it on Snopes)

[Midlodemocrat]

1. I saw one in Myrtle Beach.

Beautiful creature. That's for sure.

[Heidi]

2. Ligers are beautiful animals, for sure, but I can't support

continuing to breed them because of the liger health problems I've read about. Of 24 liger cubs born at Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain, Georgia, three developed neurological disorders as they grew older. http://www.liger.org/page/2/

Although they're lovely animals, I just can't condone breeding hybrid animals for entertainment purposes. x(

[Tulum_Moon]

4. I went to a circus once

never will again. Al they had were ligers. They seemed so unhappy. Just being in a circus makes all animals unhappy, but these broke my heart.

[Heidi]

5. I'm not a big fan of circuses or zoos.

I realize the argument can be made that circuses and zoos raise public appreciation for animals, but (like you) I've always felt profoundly sad after being at a zoo of circus. So I stopped going to them.

[CottonBear]

3. That is one big kitty.

:wow: Those people are braver than I am.

Look at the size of its head, mouth and teeth. :scared:

[Dragonbreathp9d]

6. Gorgeous!

both cat and woman :)

[begin_within]

7. Is it recognized officially as a species?

[Heidi]

8. Ligers are hybrids,

and not species with their own naturally-occurring breeding populations. I believe it's more of a sub-species. Today, they're bred primarily with human intervention for entertainment purposes. :hi:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger

[Schema Thing]

9. DONT think of Vaginas

[skygazer]

10. Another case of just because you can doesn't mean you should

I'm not crazy about the idea of purposely breeding between species. I'm also not crazy about breeding wild animals for our entertainment.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

15. Neither am I. I think its against nature.

Sometimes , I am really afraid of the things people do.

[Heidi]

11. For what it's worth, friend, my favorite breed of cat is the bengal cat,

and I'll probably never have a pair of bengal kittens because the breed didn't occur naturally in the wild, and is now only continued professional breeders. :cry:

Don't want you think I'm dissin' ya with my opposition to ligers. :hug:

[ET Awful]

14. I didn't think you were dissin' me

:P

I wasn't making a statement one way or the other (I'm more inclined to agree with you than to disagree).

I was just posting the pictures because the thing was so damned HUGE.

:)

I will, however, point out this part of my original post "He is the unintentional result of two enormous big cats living close together at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, in Miami, Florida, and already dwarfs both his parents."

They weren't planning on it or intentionally cross-breeding.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. 20 lbs of meat per day, not 200 lbs

See the Snopes article, and the original Daily Mail article.

200 lbs of meat for a 1000 lb animal would be huge - it weighs about 6 times as much as a man. That would be the equivalent of a man eating 30 lbs of meat per day.

[supernova]

13. How tame is that creature?

:scared:

[baldguy]

16. Where does Hercules sleep?

Anywhere he wants to.