Hi malcolm, thankyou for your response, very interesting. I dont spose you could tell me how the fight between the Lion and Tigeress panned out?
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The text above is a follow-up to ...
-----Question-----
Hi Malcolm, my name is Scott, pleased to meet you. Just wondering Malcolm if you could answer the question "who would win a fight, a Lion or Tiger"? from your expertise. it's a debate that goes on and on on certain forums, some favour the Lion, other favour the Tiger, please could you give me a straight answer? Could you also explain your reasons for which one yopu choose?
Thankyou for your time,
Scott
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Hey Scott!
Pleased to meet you too.
It is almost impossible to know for sure who would be the winner. As you probably know, tigers and lions do not coexist in the wild, and thus, all fights between them would happen in captivity.
This means that all we know about wild lion and wild tiger behavior is simply useless when trying to predict
the outcome of such a fight.
Captive animals "work" differently; in captivity, you can find some lions that would attack a train if they had the chance, and some others that would run away from a dog. The same happens with tigers. And since
each tiger and each lion has its own psychological traits, the outcome of a fight would depend largely on these traits, rather than size, strength or species.
For example; I saw once a fight between a large African lion and a female Bengal tiger. The lion was more than twice the size of the tigress, and yet, she won the fight. Actually, she forced the lion to run away.
Was she stronger? Definitely no. But she was more aggressive and fully confident in herself, and this automatically made her the best fighter of the two. You've probably heard that lions are more aggressive than tigers, but this is not truth; there are aggressive lions and there are aggressive tigers. These are personality traits, and personality is an individual matter.
So, my answer is that it would largely depend on the individual fighters, regardless of species. Lions and tigers are about the same size, and have the same weaponry, so asking "who would win a fight between a lion and a tiger" is just like asking who would win a fight between two lions, or two tigers.
I hope this was useful for you.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.
Best regards
Malcolm
Answer Hey again, Scott.
The lion and the tigress knew each other for a long time, but did not live in the same enclosure (today, most zoos and wildlife sanctuaries will try to avoid tiger/lion mating because the offspring is likely to suffer all sorts of health problems).
One day the tiger enclosure was being cleaned, and the female was released in the lion's enclosure just for a couple hours. As soon as she entered the enclosure, she attacked the lion by slapping his face with her paws and roaring. The lion fought back but within seconds the tigress managed to grab his head and immobilize him. Finally he escaped her grip and ran away. She didn't try to chase him; she just sat in the middle of the enclosure, watching her surroundings. The lion didn't move from the other side of the enclosure until she was taken back to her own.
It was interesting to watch, but the outcome wasn't entirely unexpected; this tigress in particular is very aggressive (even tough she was breed in captivity), and the lion is an easy going guy that even lets his handlers scratch his belly. Not really a match, even being twice the size of the tigress.
Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt.
