I'm sure everyone thinks of Napoleon Dynamite when they hear of a liger. In real life the animals may not by magical, but they do exist. What is the difference between the two? A liger is a cross between a male lion and a female tiger and the tigon is just the opposite. This cross doesn't occur in nature, all ligers and tigons were bred in captivity. (Tigers and lions don't live near each other in the wild). Usually these crossed animals are infertile and unable to breed, but very rarely a female will be able to reproduce and can create even weirder crosses.



Liger:
Ligers are some of the largest recorded cats in the world. They can be up to 12 ft tall when on their hind legs and weigh around a half a ton. They have light stripes as well as spots. The male liger can sometimes have a mane but it doesn't usually reach the length of a full bred tiger. They can generally make sounds that sound like a tiger or a lion or even a mixture of the two. Their face tends to be shaped like a tiger and the rest of their body like a lion.

Tigon:
Very few tigons exist in the world because of various problems. One problem is that the female tiger doesn't have enough room in her womb for the cubs and they are usually born stillborn or premature. If the cubs do survive the birth they are usually small and tend to get sick easily. They are the exact opposite of a liger. They have a lion shaped face with a small tiger body. Some males have a very very slight mane, but barely worth mentioning. Tigons can also make sounds of both the tiger and lion.

Very few of these crosses occur in zoos. Most zoos feel that it is unfair and unnatural, and I would have to agree. They are cool in theory, but it isn't very nice to the animals. They often can't reproduce, have a short lifespan, and are sickly while alive. The room taken up by these created animals could be used to help take in a endangered animal instead. I think God's work is just better left alone.