Home>>Life
Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, December 28, 2003

Lion-tiger couple at odds in Hainan zoo

A lion and his tigress sweetheart are at odds, right when zoo keepers expect them to conceive a lion-tiger, say sources at a wildlife park in China's southernmost province of Hainan.


PRINT DISCUSSION CHINESE SEND TO FRIEND


A lion and his tigress sweetheart are at odds, right when zoo keepers expect them to conceive a lion-tiger, say sources at a wildlife park in China's southernmost province of Hainan.

Two-year-old lion "Heihei" and 3.5-year-old tigress "Huanhuan" were both born in the park, and have been sharing a pen since April, when zookeepers found they were in love.

Their discrepancies started after Huanhuan entered oestrum. disappointed that Heihei did not show love and concern as she had expected, she restlessly paced the floor and at times roared out to the visitors.

Her obstinate lover, however, would retreat to the farthest corner of the pen and refuse to look Huanhuan in the eye, though zoo workers kept poking him with a stick, reminding him that he should be more gentleman-like.

Experts say wild tigers and lions cannot mate owing to different living environments. Even when raised together artificially, they rarely interbreed, and the pregnancy rate is very low -- estimated at only one or two percent. Due to the differences in their chromosomes, the rate of survival of their offspring is only one in 500,000.

China's first tiger-lion cub was born at Hongshan Zoo in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, in 2002. But it died just a week later.

A lion-tiger, or liger, was born in September, 2002, and lived for more than 100 days at a forestry park in Fuzhou, capital of the east China's Fujian Province.


Questions?Comments? Click here
    Advanced








 


Trade war? A buying spree for cheap Chinese goods ( 55 Messages)

Humanization reform gets started in prison in China ( 2 Messages)

China develops IPv6 technology to tackle IP address exhaustion ( 3 Messages)

Returned overseas students to work in government ( 2 Messages)

EU considers lifting 14-year-old ban on arms sales to China ( 8 Messages)



Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved