Why are female ligers/tigons fertile

Hey everyone,

just wondering why female ligers/tigons- a liger is has a lion father and a tiger mother. A tigon has a tiger father and a lion mother.- are fertile given that most hybrid are sterile. Male ligers/tigons are sterile so why should the females be fertile.

Alot of the time when animals are cross-bread, the most commonly know type is a muel (a horse+donkey). Because the DNA doesnt correspond close enough to be-able to produce offsping, or so I have heard, every man or woman is something like 0.00000002% diffrent in DNA which is why we can have inter-racial relationships, but a lion and a tiger are not the same race, they maybe in the cat family and be close enough to produce a mix of both, but they are still not close enought to enable a liger/tigons to produce offsping themselves, in the 1980's, there was a monkey called oscar, who stood up-right like a man, and desplayed intelegence, but could not talk, he was also imputant, he was rumored to be have had a human father and a ape-like mother, the was the result, close enough to be born, but close enought to have offsping him-self. I hope this has helped you.

but thats just it female ligers/tigons are fertile. How can lion/tiger DNA be close enough that the females can produce offspring but the males can't? Shouldn't both genders be either sterile or fertile?

hmmm, i see the problem with this...i supose muels dont have anything there they are neither boy nor girl, but i supose if a male liger/tigon can produce sperm i guess i would be possible to have offsping...but the womans ovaries probably havent adapted(evolved) to this hybrid, so once fertalised they probably just die? Please tell me what you think about this theorie?

Oscar the monkey was scary, they had a show on him on the history channel. They said he was passed around, and tried to rape his women owner. He was freaky tho, its worth watching an hour video on him.

[edit on 25-8-2006 by ProjectX1986]

Personally I saw him on channel 4, and yeah thats what i ment, he must have been a cross between a man/monkey man/ape. Thats so disgusting though, but he was a amazement, people thought he was a missing link at first, but then they concluded some-one actually "did it" with a primate. And he was the result.

Originally posted by krax
i supose if a male liger/tigon can produce sperm i guess i would be possible to have offsping...but the womans ovaries probably havent adapted(evolved) to this hybrid, so once fertalised they probably just die?

Its an interesting idea but how could the lions/tigers ovaries have adapted to the lions/tigers sperm to produce the liger/tigon in the first place?

I ment more like, Sperm is baically DNA, but ovaries do sort of have to adapt to the new enviroment, as in the insides of the liger/tigon probably havent evolved enough through survival of the fittest to cope with the womb, lions and tigers probably have very diffrent insides, i don't completly know this is just what i think most logical lol

True but ligers/tigons can fall pregnant to another lion/tiger just not another liger/tigon. So it shouldn't be a problem with the womb. But i could be misunderstanding you.

nooo, the whole point of this thread is that male ligers/tigons can reproduce but females are infertile, but if i have misunderstood you please say loll

sorry it would appear that i have been sidetracked

I'll take a stab at it, but this is just my best guess. I think the reason is in the X / Y chromosomes that determine sex. It could be that the male sex chromosome is incomplete or not fully compatible between the two species, so the males are infertile.

The males are fertile, the females arent lol, but that sounds like it could work, in theory the other way around, on the females, i could, and probably am wrong. lol

can someone post a link or picture of oscar the monkey/man?

Are there any links about oscar the monkey thing? Sounds interesting.

Originally posted by ajh91
Hey everyone,

just wondering why female ligers/tigons- a liger is has a lion father and a tiger mother. A tigon has a tiger father and a lion mother.-are fertile given that most hybrid are sterile. Male ligers/tigons are sterile so why should the females be fertile .

I thought the females were fertile and the males sterile.

They are. sorry if I was unclear. I meant how come the females are fertile since in most other hybrids both genders are sterile.

Originally posted by krax
The males are fertile, the females arent lol, but that sounds like it could work, in theory the other way around, on the females, i could, and probably am wrong. lol

sorry ajh91, this is what I was referring to

Thats cool. I think i have found the answer. For some reason the gender with the different chromosomes (x,y) is always sterile. This is in accordance with haldanes rule.

When in the F1 offspring of two different animal races one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is the heterozygous (heterogametic) sex.

en.wikipedia.org...

I am so confused... so the male are infertile and the women can have babies, ok then i agree with

I'll take a stab at it, but this is just my best guess. I think the reason is in the X / Y chromosomes that determine sex. It could be that the male sex chromosome is incomplete or not fully compatible between the two species, so the males are infertile.