The genus Panthera includes leopards, jaguars, and tigers as well as lions. In captivity, lions have been induced to mate with other big cats. The offspring of a lion and a tigress is called a liger; that of a tiger and a lioness, a tigon; that of a leopard and a lioness, a leopon.
A Panthera hybrid is a crossbreed between individuals of any of the five species of the genus Panthera: the tiger, lion, jaguar, leopard, and snow leopard.
Although they rarely meet in the wild, lions and tigers are still so closely related that they are able to interbreed, and in captivity they occasionally do. But successful interbreeding is the key, and the hybrid offspring are usually sterile and short-lived.
A jaglion or jaguon is the offspring between a male jaguar and a female lion (lioness).
A leopon /ˈlɛpən/ (portmanteau of leopard and lion) is the hybrid offspring of a male leopard and a female lion. The head of the animal is similar to that of a lion while the rest of the body carries similarities to leopards. These hybrids are produced in captivity and are unlikely to occur in the wild.
TIGER/JAGUAR HYBRID
There is one reported case of a "tiguar". A male tiguar, named Mickey was allegedly born at Altiplano Zoo, San Pablo Apetitlan in Mexico zoo in 2007. His father was a Siberian tiger and his mother a wild-born female jaguar captured in Mexico.
Add a jaguar or leopard to the mix (any of the four species of the big-cat genus, Panthera, can interbreed) and you get all sorts of crazy combinations. Though many hybrid animals are infertile, ligers and tigons are not.
Because a cheetah and a leopard cannot breed together, we consider them two different species. Other rules that divide similar animals or plants into different species are controversial.
Since the black panther is simply a black form of leopard, these can breed with regular spotted leopards. The offspring are not hybrids. See Mutant Big Cats for more information on black leopards.
Should such a pairing produce offspring (see above), they would be similar to a cheetah/leopard hybrid but with a different spotting pattern. The cheetah's closest relative is the Puma (America). The two species could only meet in a zoo or menagerie and I have found no reported attempts to breed cheetah/puma hybrids.
In fact, such human-animal hybrids are often referred to as “chimeras”. While this scientific advance offers the prospect of growing human organs inside animals for use in transplants, it can also leave some people with a queasy feeling.
Ligers do not live in the wild
While there are animal hybrids that occur naturally, ligers only exist in captivity, like parks, zoos, or animal sanctuaries because, in the wild, these species do not share the same habitat. Lions and tigers do not really have an opportunity to mate outside of captivity.
As with the tigon, the liger exists only in captivity. Historically, the Asiatic lion and the Bengal tiger co-occurred in some Asian countries, and there are legends of male lions mating with tigresses in the wilderness, or of ligers existing there.
A wholphin, a cross between a female bottle-nosed dolphin and a male false killer whale, is one of the rarest hybrid animals on earth.
Probably not. Ethical considerations preclude definitive research on the subject, but it's safe to say that human DNA has become so different from that of other animals that interbreeding would likely be impossible.
When two different species successfully mate, the resulting offspring is called a hybrid. Hybrids are often, but not always, sterile (think of mules). Hybrids aren't necessarily good news for a rare or threatened species.
Five of the eight Texas cougars successfully bred with male panthers and produced healthy offspring, sparking a panther population rebound that continues today.
Hybrids of both sexes have been reported. Mentions of fertile female jaguar-leopard hybrids seem all to refer to hybrids from leopard mothers. Jaguar-leopard hybrids were intentionally produced at Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich during the early 1900s. During that same era, other such hybrids were also produced in Chicago.
Originally Answered: Can we crossbreed mountain lion and lion? Nope. Mountain lions are actually more closely related to housecats than to lions. Mountain lions, jaguarundis, and cheetahs are all grouped as the puma lineage of the felinae (small to medium cat) branch of the Felidae family tree.
Moreover, male ligers have lowered testosterone levels and sperm counts, rendering them infertile while females, though capable of reproducing with either a lion or a tiger, often give birth to sickly cubs that don?t survive.
Broadly speaking, different species are unable to interbreed and produce healthy, fertile offspring due to barriers called mechanisms of reproductive isolation. These barriers can be split into two categories based on when they act: prezygotic and postzygotic.
Leopards (Panthera pardus) are considered by many to be pound for pound the most athletic of big cats. These cats are able to bring prey that sometimes weighs more than they do up into trees to prevent it from being taken by other predators.
There are no confirmed hybrids between the Lynx and domestic cats and there would almost certainly be a similar size difference/gestation period difference to that encountered in serval hybrids.
But creating hybrids of animals that are very genetically distinct from each other—such as a dog and a cat—is scientifically impossible, as is one species giving birth to an entirely different one.
Surprisingly, a domestic cat and a bobcat cannot produce viable offspring despite their similar appearances. While some rumors suggest that there are mixed hybrid bobcats, this is false. There is no scientific evidence that points to this possibility since they have such different reproductive systems.