Tigon facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Tigon |
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A tigon is a special animal that is a mix of a male tiger and a female lion. This means its parents are from the same big cat family but are different kinds of cats. Tigons are not as common as ligers, which are a mix of a male lion and a female tiger.
What Tigons Look Like
Tigons get features from both their tiger father and lioness mother. This means they can have spots from their mother and stripes from their father. If a male tigon grows a mane, it will be shorter and less full than a lion's mane. It will look more like the fur around a male tiger's neck.
Many people think tigons are smaller than lions or tigers, but this is not true. They do not grow larger than their parents because they get special genes from their lioness mother that stop them from growing too big. However, they are not tiny either. Tigons often weigh around 180 kilograms (about 400 pounds).
Tigon Reproduction
Tigons are only found in zoos or special animal centers. This is because lions and tigers live in different parts of the world and would not meet in the wild.
At the Alipore Zoo in India, a female tigon successfully had cubs with an Asiatic lion. Some of these cubs grew very large, weighing at least 363 kilograms (about 800 pounds). They stood about 1.32 meters (4.3 feet) tall at the shoulder and were 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) long in total.
There are also stories of a rare animal called a titigon. This animal is born when a female tigon mates with a male tiger. Titigons look a bit like golden tigers but have lighter stripes. One female tigon at the Shambala Preserve was thought to be unable to have babies. But she surprised everyone by having a titigon cub with a male Siberian tiger.
This titigon was three-quarters tiger. He had darker stripes than his mother and sounded more like a tiger. Since he was only about one-quarter lion, he did not grow a mane.
Images for kids
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A tigon
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Another view of a tigon
See also
In Spanish: Tigón para niños
