Your favorite big cats: Part 3!

While these guys aren't the "big cats" everyone thinks of, they deserve just as much love!

The Canada, Eurasian, Iberian Lynxes, and the Bobcat, make up the 4 Lynxes! Essentially looking like an enormous house cat with ear tufts and big, huge paws for walking on snow, with a nubby or short tail, the Lynxes span the entirety of North America, Russia, and Europe, are are some of the most widespread cats in the entire world.

These cats can weight anywhere from 15-60 (The bobcat on the smaller side and Eurasian Lynx on the larger) pounds, and like our friends the Snow leopard and cheetah, cannot roar!

While our picture here is of the Canadian Lynx, I urge you guys to take a look into the Iberian Lynx, as it's overwhelmingly the most endangered cat in the world. Sadly, there's estimated to be less than 200 left in the wild.

Everyone's favorite Archer reference: The Ocelot!

Known as the dwarf leopard, this guy is the Leopard to the jaguars' lion. While they're nowhere near the size of the other big cats size (usually just 20-40 pounds), they're every bit as fierce. They'll fight each other to the death for territory, things even some of the larger cats won't do (at least, not to the death anyway).

They may be little, but they're cute as hell!

The "Panther", the misconception of the big cat world

This is by far my biggest area of expertise. While people the world over refer to black big cats as panthers, even naming movie characters and football teams after them, the truth is that a "panther" is nothing more than a melanistic jaguar or leopard (this picture is of a melanistic jaguar). Melanistic is the opposite of albinism, in that it is a gene development of a dark pigmentation. Melanism rarely occurs in the wild (not impossible, just unusual) and so it's largely a zoo breeding thing.

While melanistic lions, tigers, and mountain lions have all been hypothesized, none have ever been documented in the wild, or produced in captivity.

EDIT: Let me clarify this here: Jaguars, Leopards, Lions, Tigers, and Snow Leopards, are all part of the genus Panthera. This is where the term panther comes from. But because the usage of the word can cover multiple species (therefore causing confusion), and propagates the idea that there is a separate, individual species called the panther, I believe this term to be unnecessary, overused, and generally harmful towards the scientific classification of the big cats.

The genetic miracle: The Liger

Many of you remember Ligers as the mystical beings that Napoleon Dynamite used to draw in his school notebook. However, ligers are actually very real, albeit, completely unnatural. Through specifically a MALE lion and a FEMALE tigress, a liger is born, and they are undeniably the biggest cats to walk the planet in at least the past few thousand years. The boy in this picture, Hercules, weighs over a THOUSAND pounds and is over 9 feet long. That's compared to the biggest natural cat, the tiger, weighing maybe 700 pounds. They grow so large because they lack the growth inhibiting gene usually received from the mother.

Unfortunately, Ligers suffer from a host of genetic problems, and have long been thought to be infertile

The Liger's little brother: The Tigon

The product of a male tiger and a female lioness, the tigon is the smaller of the 2 major big cat hybrids, who, however, does inherit the growth inhibiting gene, and so rarely exceeds 400 pounds. They also exhibit similar genetic defects to the liger, but usually not the physical problems that come from the Liger's immense size.

Hope you guys enjoyed!

EDIT: Part 1: Cheetahs, Leopards and Jaguars http://imgur.com/gallery/md8HT
Part 2: Tigers, lions, snow leopards, cougars and clouded leopards http://imgur.com/gallery/r6ymt