Ligers and Incomplete DNA
Let's start this stuff by questioning that how many chromosomes a liger has? A male lion has 38 chromosomes. The same is true about the lionesses as well. Furthermore; even male and female tigers have 38 chromosomes each. When these big cats have an intercourse with one another, 19 chromosomes, come from the male, and 19 chromosomes come from the female to produce an offspring. Therefore, their offspring have 38 chromosomes each. In other words ligers have 38 chromosomes, 19 of which are from male lion and 19 of them are from female tiger.
If a lion offspring is born through 19 chromosomes from mother and 19 from its father and have a complete DNA and chromosome structure throughout its body, then definitely a newly born liger will also have complete DNA chromosome structure. A liger will have a complete chromosomes and DNA structure because both of its parents lion and tiger will have 19 chromosomes each and both belong to the cat family. So here we are proving logically that a liger has 38 chromosomes and these chromosomes are totally normal and same as that of the lions and tigers. Therefore; it is a very useless debate to consider that ligers have incomplete chromosomes.
Now the question comes where does this chromosome debate arise against ligers? The simple answer is negative propaganda! There are a lot of animal rights activists who are politically motivated to aim negatively against ligers. They always seek opportunities to find and speak anything that comes against ligers without and proof and logic. So whatever they see or learn, they just seem to apply on all the animals without any research and observation. They simply create a hoax and spread it through their advertising channels both online and offline. In the case of hybrids it is possible that some hybrids whose parents belong to different groups, will have incomplete DNA and chromosome structure, but that does not mean that you just keep applying this theory on all the hybirds.
Ligers stand for big cats conservation. According to Dr. Bhagavan Antle the role of the ligers is to become the brand ambassador of the big cats and promote funding for big cats preservation both at the wild and within captivity. Having lies like that of incomplete chromosomes is just a deliberate attempt by these individuals to stop big cats preservation and conservation.
Big Cat Rescue is one such organization which openly claims that ligers have incomplete DNA. They always have their advertising channels targeting negatively against ligers. Just write Liger within Google Search Results and you will always see the ad of Big Cat Rescue Center which states negative stuff about ligers. Such stuffs have so far being denied by the liger experts and they are considered as myths.
