What do you think about hybridized animals such as “ligers”?
I went to a state fair last summer and there was this traveling zoo, and they had 2 baby LIGER cubs. the little cubs were a tannish-gold color with light brown stripes. their mother was a tiger and their father was a lion. the parents came from a zoo and the zoo keepers put the lion’s genes into the tiger’s genes themselves and out came 2 ligers. i thought it was pretty cool but when i told someone about it they were disgusted by the idea. what do you think about this?
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I feel the same way. I don’t think Ligers are healthy for some reason. But if they were, it’d be a cool thing to have a new species.
Useless silly waste.
MULES on the other hand,are & have been for thousands of years,very useful draft animals.
*&*…AI is *not* “putting genes into genes”….it’s merely collecting semen & introducing it into an ovulating female.
There is a view (needs checking) that tiger-lion hybrids occured naturally from time to time. So, they are freaks in a way but cross-species hybridization is considered as an effective way to move evolution along. Some of them on rare occasion, can have breath-taking advantage.
THis zoo has an advantage of having them, so… It is not strictly natural thing,… well I would say it is advantage for them in this situation-they are provided for their whole life, no worries
All full text articles: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc?term=%22interspecific%20hybridization%22title
And of course, they are not useless (they are life and beautiful), although they are not “useful draft animals” as some utilitarians here think
In most cases it is nothing short of sad. Ligers for example are ONLY bred for human greed, it is a “oh cool I want one of those” or “oh that will bring me money” type of breeding. Ligers are left to suffer and due to genetic mixing the vast majority have horrid health problem and live horrid unhealthy lives.
If it is something that occurs natural, no problem… but when people force different species together just to make money or something cool it is nothing short of sick where the animals are left to suffer.
I find them interesting from a purely scientific point of view – it is interesting to see which animals can interbreed, and what traits the young will inherit from each parent. However, I have to say I disagree with zoos and wildlife parks breeding these animals, because they have no value from a conservation point of view. They are taking up space and resources that could be used to conserve endangered species. Also, they sometimes (though not always, of course) have genetic problems due to their mixed parentage and can suffer as a result.
It would be unusual for ligers to be produced through artificial insemination or IVF, which I assume is what you meant by ‘the zookeepers put the lion’s genes into the tiger’s genes themselves’. The usual method of producing ligers is simply to house a lion and tiger together from a young age, or to keep them in adjoining enclosures, so that they are familiar with each other, and mix them when the female comes into season. They will then mate naturally. See:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/lion%20tiger%20mating/Scaly_Killer/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.jpg?t=1192425931
http://media.photobucket.com/image/lion%20tiger%20mating/amberdino_2008/humpers.jpg
Did you know that the reverse pairing, a male tiger mating with a female lion, produces young called tigons? They do not grow to the massive size of ligers, and so are generally bred less often as they are less impressive.
I think it makes me want to puke. There is a certain amount of scientific voyeurism involved but the ethics far outweigh any real benefits these creatures could provide.