Interspecies hybrids: natural & artificial

[Sully]

On 22 May 2017, Karl Shuker, author and cryptozoologist in England, discovered this long lost photograph of an extraordinary hybrid cat. Cubanacan, the progeny of a lion and a tigon [tiger x lioness] was born at the Alipore Zoo in Kolkata, India, on 7 March 1979, and was the only surviving cub of his litter of three.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Cubanacan as portrayed in the 1985 Guinness Book of Records.
Alipore Zoo, Kolkata

Alipore Zoo had embarked on a fifteen-year endeavour to hybridise lions and tigers, an effort that created Cubanacan’s tigon mother, Rudrani, and her sister, Rangini, several years earlier. A pioneering scientific success for India, and even the rest of the world, Cubanacan was widely regarded as the first litigon born in the world.

*This image is copyright of its original author

A depiction of Cubanacan’s tigon mother, Rudrani, approaching his lion father, Devabrata. From 100 Years of Calcutta Zoo (1875-1975).
The Centenary Celebration Committee, Zoological Garden, Alipore, Calcutta (1975)
 

*This image is copyright of its original author

A captioned photograph of the litigon Cubanacan, published in The Statesman, Calcutta (now Kolkata) on 12 March 1980.
However, a record from 1943 indicates a successful mating between a fifteen-year-old lion-tiger and a lion at the Munich Hellabrunn Zoo to produce a female cub. Even so, Cubanacan’s remarkable genetic makeup sparked interest and enthusiasm in India and around the globe. The fascination with hybrid cats continued as Rudrani produced four more litigons in subsequent years.
There is now evidence that these experiments were led by a scientific quest to determine if hybrids could be fertile, a question that struck at the heart of the notion of biological species. At the time, the very definition of species hinged on reproductive isolation.  Though probing at a research question, concerns surfaced about artificially creating animals not found in the wild as freaks for public curiosity. There were also claims of animal cruelty during the process, an allegation that has come to the forefront in the current effort to ban cross breeding of big cats in the United States.

*This image is copyright of its original author

In the weeks following his birth, The Statesman ran articles about Cubanacan.
In the midst of this controversy, hybrids still command ample public attention. The 2017 Guinness World Records (formerly the Guinness Book of Records) ranked, Hercules, a liger [lion x tigress] at the Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina, the world’s largest big cat.
Cubanacan was also once the world’s largest big cat, who, according to Guinness in 1985, weighed 363 kg (800 pounds), stood 1.32 m (4.4 inches) at the shoulder and measured 3.5 m (11.6 inches) in length. Given the aversion to hybridisation and the subsequent 1985 ban on cross breeding big cats in India, it appears that Cubanacan’s memory was purposely forgotten.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Unspecified photographs of a tigon and a litigon, published in the Guidebook to Calcutta Zoo, A Dunlop Presentation, with legends whitened. Presumably, this was an effort to prevent proper identification of the taxa in the years after cross breeding became illegal. Exact publisher & publication date unknown, but circumstantially the photographs date to between 1992 and 1995.
The hybridisation debate in biology is important. So is the current proposal on banning big cat hybridisation in the US, and it is in the light of this controversy that Cubanacan’s photograph is being preserved for posterity as a valuable item in wildlife history, best viewed without value judgement.

http://blogs.nature.com/indigenus/2017/0...tigon.html Reply