What Is a Liger And Why Is It the Biggest Cat Alive?

Almost certainly yes, purely on the basis of mass. Muscular strength scales with body size, and a 900-lb liger is carrying significantly more muscle than a 420-lb lion. Whether this constitutes a meaningful advantage is another matter the liger's size also brings significant health costs, and in any natural context, a predator that large would struggle to find sufficient prey. It's a powerful animal in the way that a structurally unsound bridge can still hold a lot of weight: the raw numbers are impressive; the engineering is questionable.

Occasionally, yes which is the opposite of what most people expect. Haldane's Rule predicts that in hybrid crosses, the more complex sex (in mammals, the male, with XY chromosomes) is more likely to be sterile. Male ligers are always sterile. A small number of female ligers have been confirmed fertile; some have even produced 'liliger' or 'litigon' offspring when mated with lions or tigers. These second-generation hybrids are typically smaller and less robust.

The largest liger individuals are comparable to or exceed the estimated weight of the American lion (Panthera atrox), which went extinct around 10,000 years ago and is thought to have been the largest felid of the Pleistocene. This comparison is often cited in popular articles and is roughly accurate, though not exact. The liger doesn't represent an evolutionary peak so much as an accidental overshoot.

Both, in ways that reflect each parent's tendencies. Ligers often enjoy swimming a tiger trait; lions typically avoid water. They are social and relatively placid more lion-like. They can produce both roars (lion-derived) and chuffing sounds called prusten (tiger-derived). They are, behaviourally, something genuinely in between, which makes them interesting to study and difficult to house, since their needs don't map neatly onto protocols designed for either parent species.