lion vs tiger

Don't forget character. Lions are the only truly social cat, and the lionesses hunt in teams. Tigers are famously solitary once fully adult. You don't get a pride of tigers!

The females can be fertile, and at least one has reproduced with a tiger (from memory, but I'm pretty sure).

I think so. And yes to the hybrid point, because the males are, I think, invariably infertile.In the wild, I don't think the two species have ever been known to reproduce. It was possible until recently in Asia, but the Asian lion is now confined to one small area in Gujarat, north-west India, (where I saw them about 17 years ago).They used to be a lot more widespread, including towards the middle-east and Europe. They are the lions of the Bible and ancient Greek stories, not the African lions.They would have encountered tigers all over India, certainly, but no-one knows what would have happened. My guess is that the solitary tigers would keep away from the prides of lions, because of the numbers.

So, in fact, quite a lot of differences. It interests me, because when paleontologists talk about stasis in the fossil record, they could be looking at two such creatures, but several million years apart. They might assume them to be the same species, but the hard body parts cannot really give an indication of how much difference there could be.I like tiger, or tigers (I don't know which is correct!). I went looking for them in India as well, and saw a few. They look great in their habitat. Their camouflage makes them a lot prettier than lions, IMO!

Yes. Unless it's supposed to be the sum total down both branches.

I just meant that it wouldn't be possible to take a male and female half-breed and make an entire new sub-species from them which would be half-lion, half-tiger.Same with mules, because it's very rare for them to be fertile, so whenever you see one, it's actually the product of a direct cross between a horse and a donkey. Because they're actually more useful than either of the parent species as beasts of burden, people certainly would have bred them as a new sub-species if they could.

We did go into Ranthambore once, but just for one morning, and didn't see any tiger. The longer time you can give it, the better the chance (to state the obvious).It was at Khana, in central India (Madhya Pradesh) that we saw several, but that was over a 4/5 day period going into the park every morning and evening. Very early mornings are the best bet.The nice thing about it was that, in a very large area with about 100 tiger at the top of the food chain, there's a lot of other wild life about, so even without the cats, it's well worth it.Take a good pair of binoculars. More important than a camera, for me, and there are plenty of exotic birds. The peacocks were displaying while we were there, which was thoughtful of them!It was nearly 20 years ago, so I hope it's not too crowded now.Good memories!