Day 35

Have you ever been to Tiger World in Rockwell?  If you haven't, I highly recommend a visit!  It opened back up this past weekend.Tiger World is an endangered wildlife non-profit zoo that focuses on education, conservation and preservation.  The last time that I was there, which has been a few years now, they had a liger named Wayne, so I am not sure if he is still there.  A liger is a cross between a male lion and a female tiger which are the same species but a different genus.  In the wild, lions and tigers don't live anywhere near each other so ligers are definitely always bred in captivity.  Ligers are the largest of all the existing 'big cats' today, ranging between 9.5-11 feet.  Wayne weighed in at 800 lbs.  Tigons are a cross between a male tiger and female lion.  Like a mule, which is a cross between a female horse and a male donkey (same species, different genus), ligers and tigons are sterile and cannot breed.  A lot of people question the ethics of creating tigons and ligers that would never be created in the wild because they are often born with health problems, the animals are prone to gigantism and the mother often has to have surgical intervention to give birth because of the cub's enormous size.  You can read a little bit more about the ligers and the ethics of breeding hybrid animals here and here.

Today's challenge is to create a wacky animal hybrid.  We don't need to worry the ethics of creating these animals because today, we are just using our imagination.  If you head over to google and search 'Animal Hybrids' in images, you'll get a page full of wacky animal hybrid ideas that could never exist in reality.  A horse with a duck face, a guinea pig lion, a dolphin kangaroo - there are a ton of them.  The image below comes up on your first search.

If you are having trouble coming up with and idea you can visit hybrid creature generators here or here.  The first link gives you ideas like a lab accident resulting in a strange cross between and rabbit and a lion.  The second link gives you pictures and even names them.  What do you think a Mooyote is?  Draw your hybrid, give it a name, take a pic and share in google classrooms. Have fun, but remember, no lab experiments!