Fertility and Breeding
In general, male big cat hybrids are sterile while female big cat hybrids are fertile and may be bred back to one of the parental species or to another big cat species, as was the case with the Congolese Spotted Lion (a 3-species complex hybrid).
In general, hybrids are no longer bred by zoos as the current emphasis is on conservation of pure species. The only hybrid big cats commonly and deliberately bred in recent times are ligers. It is unlikely that further lijaguleps will be bred.
Read more about this topic: Congolese Spotted Lion
Famous quotes containing the words fertility and/or breeding:
“Go bind thou up young dangling apricots
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
Go thou, and like an executioner
Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays
That look too lofty in our commonwealth.
All must be even in our government.
You thus employed, I will go root away
The noisome weeds which without profit suck
The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Good breeding ... differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)