A superficial hybrid impresses by its size and provokes controversy by its origin

He was born 6 years ago crossing a tigress and a lion and weighs 350 pounds. This feline hybrid is one of the so-called "ligres" raised in the United States.

Currently measuring three meters and five centimeters, parameters that have made it the largest family group.

Apollo, as we call it, has become in the last days a viral phenomenon on social networks since it surprises by its size and docility.

This ligre lives in
Myrtle Beach Safari located in South Carolina and is about to make a mark in the

Guinness

World record. Officially, the world's largest liger is the specimen called Hercules (418 kilos), which also lives in the Myrtle Beach Safari and is the Apollo's uncle.

Their caregivers, Mike Holston and Kody Antle, claim that Apollo was born in 2013, along with four other products. The most curious is that at birth, Apollo was the smallest of the group.

The litter has become the world's first albino ligar produced from a white lion and a white tigress.

The caregivers point out that he behaved rather like "a domestic kitten, purring all the time and always demanding that he be petted".

Holston and Antle publish images of Apollo and other animals on social networks, where they report on their stage of growth and maturation.

One of the most striking aspects of this hybrid is that its daily diet consists of eight kilos of beef, distributed between the morning, afternoon and evening.

Origin and criticism

The first references to the forced pbadages between lions and tigers date back to the 18th century in India, as curiosity aroused by rich colonists or Lamarckist naturalists (who denied the theory of evolution of Darwin and Wallace), as Étienne Geoffroy Saint -Hilaire.

More recently, these hybrids are proliferating private centers in which reproduction, exhibition and purchase-selling are encouraged.

Several groups of animals are opposed to crossings between lions and tigers, declaring them unnatural and dangerous for the females that give birth. In addition, they accuse them of ignoring the current ethical values ​​of nature defense.

To this they add that offspring may have genetic defects or conbad problems. One of them would be gigantism, as in the case of Liger.