Hercules: the largest cat in the world lives with people and weighs like 2 lions

The average weight of a lion is about 200 kilograms, but Hercules weighs twice as much.

Zoologists call this species a liger, and the main feature here is the size: in a backstand, Hercules can easily reach the second floor.

Hercules was born in the reserve of the Institute of Endangered and Rare Species.

Ligers are usually planned by zoologists, but in this case, the parents of the largest cat in the world simply lived in one large enclosure.

In nature, ligers do not occur, since the range of tigers and lions does not intersect.

Therefore, nature did not foresee how the genes of big cats would be combined during hybridization.

Scientists have studied the phenomenon of their size for a long time and realized that the lion passes on the growth gene to the descendant, while the genes of the tiger do not block them.

For this reason, the liger is noticeably larger than both lions and tigers.

The growth of an ordinary lion in full growth is approximately 2.6-2.8 meters, the growth of Hercules rising on his hind legs is 3.7 meters.

With such dimensions, the liger should not be too dexterous. But Hercules can both run fast and swim dexterously.

It has long been included in the Guinness Book of Records and since then a representative of the cat family has not yet appeared on earth, which would be larger.

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