When Ligers Attack

Ligers are Napoleon Dynamite's favorite animal and the offspring of a male lion mating with a tigress. They are known to be enormous and tremendously fierce. It's unclear why combining male lion DNA with female tiger DNA results in a creature who is much bigger than either species. But sometimes the results can be deadly, as a volunteer at the Wagoner County wildlife sanctuary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, learned yesterday.

Rocky the liger attacked the man feeding him, biting his neck and chest. The man remains in critical condition and the Wagoner County wildlife sanctuary is currently closed. According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, accredited zoos frown on the practice of mixing two different species and have never bred ligers. Keeping the two species separate has always been standard procedure. However, the AZA has admitted that ligers have occurred by accident. Several AZA zoos are reported to have ligers...but this particular wildlife sanctuary is not an AZA-accredited zoo.

Sounds like ligers don't occur in nature — only when big cats are cooped up in zoos together. And they don't take to kindly to living in unaccredited parks either.

that's a big kitty