Do big cats ever try to breed when they are different types -e.g cheetahs and?

Question

leopards etc. I know that there are Ligers and Tigons, etc but haven't these cats been artificially inseminated..?

Just wondering as I'm watching a wildlife show on BBC 1 now about cheetahs and lions

I know that tigons and ligers exist but did they breed naturally or was it done articifically?

I misspelt artificially!!

Answer 1

Here is an interesting article on big cat hybrids and the effect it has on their breeding and the varying outcomes of their nature.
http://journals.aol.com/tasmedic13/Animals/entries/2005/04/15/breeding-hybrids/355
This web article is great and tries to explain that most hybrids do not occur naturally but only under domesticated settings. It lists all the different forms of interbreeding among cats

http://www.lairweb.org.nz/tiger/hybridisation.html
http://www.messybeast.com/genetics/hybrid-bigcats.html
http://www.messybeast.com/genetics/hybrid-cats.htm
http://www.messybeast.com/big-cat2.html

This article provides some interesting fact about the cheetah including the fact that all cheetahs are virtual clones of one another because at one point in history, a few thousand years ago the cheetah population became so low
http://users.aristotle.net/~swarmack/kngchtah.html

Answer 2

Different species cant interbreed - that is, successfully interbreed and produce viable young. Now you can get Ligers (Tigons if the father was a Tiger? or is it the other way around) but they will always be infertile.

The reason different species cannot interbreed is to do with the numbers of chromosomes they have. The different parents can produce an offspring but when the offsprings chromosomes need to divide they will not do it properly.

A book called Mendel's Demon by Mark Ridley(possibly retitled the cooperative gene in the US) explains such topics admirably.

For the record despite the huge variation in domestic dogs due to artificial selection (by the human owners) they're still basically wolves and could interbreed successfully with viable young.

Its possible different cat species may interbreed in captivity - I dont think artificial insemination would be necessary - but as I explained there's no chance of creating a new type of big cat.

Answer 3

In the wild, cross-species hybrids between Panthera species probably don't occur very much if at all. The ligers and tions that you've heard of are real, and they were not accomplished through artificial insemination. Under captive conditions, lions and tigers will mate. I've never heard of a lion or a tiger mating with a leopard - the difference in body size makes me suspiscious that it could happen, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Cheetahs, however, cannot mate with lion, tigers, leopards, and so on. Lions, tigers, and leopards are members of the genus Panthera. Cheetahs are members of the genus Acinonyx, and are genetically too dissimilar to other big cats to produce offspring.

Answer 4

Yes. there is a hybrid cross between a lion and a tiger either called a liger or a tigon ( true, not kidding!) Don't know much more than that.

Answer 5

The animals that were cross bred were artificially inseminated.
In the wild, it takes more than different looks for animals to avoid mating with each other. After all, they don't have mirrors and don't know what they look like!
Baby animals grow up among others of their own kind and 'imprint' on them. Kontrad Lorenz did some interesting work on this. Imprinting is having a mental picture of your ideal partner. Added to that many species have specific mating rituals.
Animals that imprint on the wrong species try to mate with the species they grew up with; animals don't rear the young of other species in the wild. But in farmyards you sometimes see the odd duck running around with the hens.

Answer 6

in the wild, cats do not usually cross breed. Lions and tigers in the wild are found on totally different continents so, so no they do not breed together in the wild. Only very closely related cats can interbreed, must be in the same genus and have the same number of choromosmes. Cheetahs are very different than any other big cat, they are in their very own genus, so they are not able to interbreed at all, and this may cause them to become extinct in the future as they have no genetic variation.

Answer 7

Tigons and ligers

Answer 8

There have fairly been jaguars observed right here interior the South Western us of a. They use to roam the South West over one hundred years in the past .i assume now they are coming lower back. As some individual who has spent a lot holiday doorways interior the mountainous desolate tract right here interior the South West . The yowl ( some say scream ) of a cougar nonetheless brings chills up my backbone . They do scare me .

Answer 9

Yes catually male lions have pregnated female leopards and tigers even, I think its more of a case of who's in heat and who's around ! in the jungle ... to be honest LOL

Answer 10

without arificial insemination species dont mix