Thursday 19 August 2010

A Taiwanese surprise: lion + tiger = liger


Ligers. Image courtesy of Hkandy, CC BY-SA 3.0).




Joel Kontinen

Last weekend saw the birth of three ligers in a private zoo in Taiwan. The cubs are the offspring of an African lion and a Bengali tigress. One of the tiny ligers died soon after birth but the other two survived.

Animal rights activists are not pleased with the zoo owner for letting different species mate.

Far from providing support for Darwinian evolution, the yet tiny cubs remind us that the biological concept of species is fuzzy and differs from the Genesis concept of kind.

Genesis tells us that animals produce offspring after their kind.

Creationists often use the term baramin, from the Hebrew words bara (created) and min (kind), instead of species. Thus, for instance the dog kind (wolf, coyote, dingo, dog) is one biblical kind. Lions and tigers both belong to the cat kind.

Ligers remind us that Moses knew what he meant when he wrote that animals produce offspring after their kind.


The Taiwanese ligers can grow into big cats like this descendant of a lion and tigress kept in a German zoo.


Source:

Taiwan zoo faces fine over 'liger' cubs. BBC news 17 August 2010.