Tigon: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:35, 16 March 2007

Revision as of 22:36, 16 March 2007

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The comparative rarity of tigons is attributed to male tigers finding the courtship behaviour of a lioness too subtle and thus may miss behavioural cues that signal her willingness to mate. However lionesses actively solicit mating, so the current rarity of tigons is most likely due to their being less impressive in size than ligers, with a corresponding lesser novelty value. A century ago, tigons were evidently more common than ligers. Gerald Iles, in ''At Home In The Zoo'' (1961) was able to obtain three tigons for Manchester's Belle Vue Zoo, but wrote that he had never seen a liger. A number of tigons are currently being bred in China.

''Italic text''==History==

Tiger crosses in captivity have been common for centuries. The first recorded cross-breeding in India dates back to 1837 when a tigon was presented to Queen Victoria from the princess of Jamnagar (an Indian state).cool India has a long history of keeping and breeding tigers, especially the "[[white tiger]]s" now found in zoos around the world. Gerald Iles also referred to a travelling circus in the 1830 whose tiger and lioness produced litter after litter of hybrid cubs, some of which were exhibited to British royalty in 1838.

One of the best known tigons was ''Ranji,'' bred by Prince [[Ranjitsinji]] of Nawangagar and presented to the [[London]] Zoo in 1928. Frohawk, an artist and writer for the hunting magazine ''The Field'' found Ranji shy and said:

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== Fertility ==

In coooooooooooooooooooool''Wild Cats ''Italic text''Of The World'' (1975), Guggisberg wrote that ligers and tigons were long thought to be sterile: In 1943, however, a fifteen year old hybrid between a lion and an "Island" tiger was successfully mated with a lion at the Munich [[Tierpark Hellabrunn|Hellabrunn Zoo]]. The female cub, even though very delicate, was raised to adulthood.

Male tigons are [[infertility|sterile]] while the females are generally [[fertile]]. At the [[Alipore Zoo]] in India, a female tigon named Rudhrani, born in 1971, was successfully mated to an [[Asiatic Lion]] named Debabrata. The rare, second generation hybrid was called a '''li-tigon'''. Rudhrani produced seven li-tigons in her lifetime. Some of these reached impressive sizes—a li-tigon named Cubanacan (died 1991) weighed at least 800lb (363 kg), stood 52 inches (1.32 metres) at the shoulder, and was 11.5ft (3.5 m) in total length.