Ligers Informative Speech

The clip you just saw is from the popular movie "Napoleon Dynamite." Many of you have probably seen it before but I bet you never thought about any of it as being factual, did you? Well, even though the description was a bit off, ligers really do exist. According to Encyclopedia Americana, ligers are a hybrid cross between a male lion and a female tiger (also known as a tigress). It is nearly impossible for them to exist in the wild because most lions live in Africa and most tigers live in Asia, however under the right circumstances they can be bred. In most cases the tiger and the lion must be raised together to overcome any natural enmity between their species, however ligers have also been accidental. In China a few were produced artificially as experiments, but most often they occur as accidents among captive animals in zoos or roaming in safari parks. Deliberate hybridization is prohibited in most zoos, though. In 2001 three liger cubs were born in a zoo right here in Wisconsin. For space reasons keepers put a lion and a tiger in the same enclosure and one day they found three tiny cubs. Liger cubs don't usually look like their father. They have striped like their tiger mother, but are lighter in color. As they get older their stripes will fade. Raising liger cubs is difficult because no one ever knows if the parents will recognize the liger cubs as their own, and also it is difficult for them to survive on their own. According to Hybrid Big-Cats #1 only one out of 500,000 cubs survive due to differences in their chromosomes. In most cases humans will take care of them (sometimes keeping them in their own homes), and they will be bottle fed and taken care of until they can live in a zoo. The human contact usually helps because it makes them easier to take care of when they are older and larger, and they will get larger. Ligers are the world's biggest cats, and they are leaning towards gigantism. They are bigger than either parent, becoming anywhere from ten to twelve feet in length and weighing usually near a half of a ton or more. Ligers are larger than their parents, because according to Wikipedia encyclopedia, female lions and male tigers transmit a growth-inhibiting gene to their offspring. Being the offspring of a male lion and female tiger, though, the liger does not have the growth-inhibiting gene, and therefore they grow constantly throughout their lives until their body cannot sustain their size anymore. The counter-hybrid of the liger, the tigon, however, is smaller than its parents because it does have the growth-inhibiting gene. Both animals are crosses between tigers and lions, however they get their name according to what species the father is (for example, ligers have lion fathers, and tigons have tiger fathers). Other than their large size, ligers vary in appearance depending on how their genes interact with one and other. Usually males grow sparse manes (like those of a male lion), and the facial ruff of a tiger. Both males and females have spotted stomachs and striped back.