Ligers, once made famous thanks to 2004 flick, “Napoleon Dynamite,” are alive and well thanks to a dog. Yep, you heard right.
This month, a Manchurian tiger gave birth to three cubs. Only two survived and are currently being nursed by a dog.
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According to Death And Taxes Magazine, the offspring of a male lion and female tiger were apparently abandoned by their parents and the staff at the Xixiakou Wildlife Zoo in China found a female dog that was receptive to nursing the liger cubs.
According to the Huffington Post, the tiger mom fed the ligers for four days but then abandoned them for unknown reasons and left two died of weakness.
The father of the liger cubs is an African lion and was able to mate with a tigress because they are members of the same genus. The hybrid cross between a male lion and a tigress creates the largest of all known cats. They can reportedly weigh almost thousand pounds and can eat around 50 pounds of meat in a meal.
According to National Geographic, a lion and a tiger mating only occurs in captivity because the habitat of the species does not overlap in the wild.
Some places in the United States to catch a liger include Georgia’s Wild Animal Safari. The park is located in Pine Mountain, Georgia and reportedly has the country’s largest concentration of ligers. The park is reportedly housing ten of the massive cats and since around 2000, the park has produced some 24 Liger cubs.
One of the largest Ligers in existence resides at Jungle Island in Miami. Hercules the liger is the largest non-obese liger recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest living cat on Earth. He weighs over 400 pounds.
