Dire Tigers are real...

[glass]

Why is it I think these things (and I mean all great cats here, the greater the better) are so darn cute?

I rather liked the look of the human in those pictures, too!

EDIT: Damnit, genshou saw her first!


glass.

 

[monboesen]

Only looked at the pictures now.

Yes that is one big cat. And it looks even bigger because it is also one FAT cat. The poor thing looks decidedly overweight, a real shame and its keepers are to blame!

 

[genshou]

I rather liked the look of the human in those pictures, too!

EDIT: Damnit, genshou saw her first!


glass.

Damn straight!

 

[Dingleberry]

They want/need to seek out other individuals to form small prides, but can't accept other individuals near them.

This sounds like a lot of gamers I've met.

 

[Desdichado]

The only problem is, when you breed a tiger and a lion, the offspring are invariably absolutely insane. Massive mental problems. The breeding has been condemned pretty universally.

Saw one in the Seoul Zoo once. Yup, bloody big cat.

I've never heard that that's "invariable" or that it's "absolutely insane". Just that there are conflicting behaviors between the two species that could result in conflicting instincts for the offspring, which could possibly lead to confusion and/or depression. I have heard that they're surprisingly docile, though, and their large size is credited with minor growth dysplasia.

 

[Set]

Ligers are no more insane than house cats. Like all predators, their pleasure center is entirely too close to their killswitch and they've got world-champion-class mood-swings. You'll be petting one and it will be purring and then it's ears will go back and you better move your hand or it will draw blood...

In my (admittedly limited, sample size, two) experience ligers are *less* difficult to deal with than full-blood tigers, which have a startling capacity for holding grudges. (A lion or jaguar seems more likely to lash out when provoked, and then immediately lose interest, or even express regret and 'cry' about lashing out at their caretaker (we had one starve itself after being dropped off by the owner who'se arm it had broken, she had to drive sixty miles to feed it, and it would make moaning noises when she left, she ended up having to make a big show of 'forgiving it' and take it back...). Very unpredictable. A tiger will put up with a certain amount of abuse and not seem to care, and then turn around one day and spemd a several minutes very deliberately *killing you*...)

My grandmother raised various big cats (and other animals) for animal parks, including lions, tigers and jaguards (no bears. I fear bears.), and social (like lions) or solitary (like tigers and jaguars) makes little difference when the animal is raised by humans. Hence circus trainers having lions and tigers in the same act, and sleeping in the same cage, despite the solitary nature of wild tigers.

Just about every liger you'll see will come with the hollow admonition, 'Oh, we didn't breed this deliberately, it was just an accident that we had the cat in heat in the same cage with a male of a different species...' Yeah right. If there's an animal trainer dumb enough to not know when his couple thousands of dollar worth of revenue-generating livelihood is in heat, and what's in the cage with her, he's already been eaten by a grue.

Note how few tigons there are. If the preponderance of show ligers were truly 'accidents,' you'd expect there to be an equal number of tigon 'accidents.' And yet, tigons aren't terribly great audience draws, and so that sort of 'accident' never seems to happen. One show I attend regularly tells the exact same 'accident' story that they've been telling for years, only they're on their third liger. (Big guys don't seem to live that long, or perhaps they aren't really made for the fast-pace of celebrity life and all the coke and showgirls wears them down...)

 

[frankthedm]

Um, in-breeding is breeding two closely related animals. A tiger and a lion are about as un-related as you can get and still have relations.

Not sure why I used "in-breeding" there, was posting before bed time.

A tiger will put up with a certain amount of abuse and not seem to care, and then turn around one day and spend several minutes very deliberately *killing you*.

As seen on TV! ​

 

[Klaus]

One thing that irks me is the tendency to slap out new stats to cover any teeny difference in a creature, like the saber-toothed tiger in Frostburn or a possible liger stat. For the liger in the pictures above, I'd just use an advanced tiger and be done with (and for a sabertooth, I'd just use a dire tiger).

 

[dagger]

This sounds like a lot of gamers I've met.

LOL!!

 

[Desdichado]

For the liger in the pictures above, I'd just use an advanced tiger and be done with (and for a sabertooth, I'd just use a dire tiger).

Why? The most famous sabertooth, Smilodon californicus/fatalis (I'm of the opinion that just one species was involved here, but I don't know which name has priority...) was actually considerably smaller than a tiger; about the size of a jaguar, although probably more robustly built, and clearly had a different hunting/killing strategy with those teeth of his. Of course, assuming that any kind of "accuracy" is important to you, which there's a lot of good reasons why maybe it shouldn't be.

Hence circus trainers having lions and tigers in the same act, and sleeping in the same cage, despite the solitary nature of wild tigers.

I've read (uh... somewhere. Can't remember where now--probably Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives) that tigers seem to show lots of signs of incipient social behavior not unlike lions, and it's largely a question of the environments where they live that they don't congregate in pride structures too. Of course, that's unprovable, but your evidence there seems to support it indirectly, at least.