Liger cub

Zita, a liger — half-lioness, half-tiger — watches her one-month-old liliger cub Tuesday in the Novosibirsk Zoo. The cub’s father is a lion, Sam. The zoo in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city, is home to the liliger, a unique animal. It’s a big cat breed where the father is a lion and the mother is a lion-tiger hybrid, called a liger. The first liliger was born in the zoo last year and now there’s a second litter of three, all of them females. They were born in May, and now have grown up enough to start exploring their surroundings, showing an endearing clumsy energy. Zita was born in the zoo in 2004. Sam is an African lion.