Leopons, Ligers and Grolar Bears…Oh My!

The pictures here represent a leopon which is the cross breeding of a male leopard with a female lion.  As you can tell from the picture, the head looks like a lion while the rest of the body basically looks like a leopard.  The photo definitely looks “shopped” but apparently these creatures were first bred nearly 100 years ago!  I’d love to see the ancestry dna work up on this!

Napoleon Dynamite’s favorite animal was a Liger — combination of a lion and tiger.  Who knew this was an actual animal?  It’s actually a hybrid cross between a male lion and a female tiger.  These are the biggest feline species in the world apparently.  They look like a big lion with muted tiger stripes on the body.  The cross of a female lion with a male tiger is called a tigon!

Grolar Bears are the cross between a grizzly and a polar bear.  While rare, this breed has appeared both in captivity and the wild.  DNA testing of a strange looking bear shot in 2006 confirmed the cross in the wild.  The bear was apparently huge.  Go figure!