Can tigers purr?

No, so says the best source of information¹ on the wildcats. What I mean is that this book¹ does not mention purring as a vocalization made by the tiger. Is this incorrect? These are the sounds the tiger makes:

• main call
• prusten (short range vocalization)
• grunts (short range vocalization)
• growl
• snarl
• moan (subdued roar) - close range vocalization
• meow (this is a domestic cat vocalization, tiger style!)
• spit
• hiss (the spit and hiss are also made by the domestic cat)
• roar (although one expert says that technically tigers don't roar)  - long range call.

As you can see the purr is not included, so by default the tiger can't purr. Perhaps the experts are wrong. There is still a lot about the wildcats that we don't know.

If you can can get close enough to a tiger to touch his throat, you might feel a purr if he is content! In this video, a tiger called "Freedom" (he is caged) moans and purrs when petted. You have to listen carefully.



Associated page: Cat Sounds.

Note: 1. Wild Cats of the World, page 356. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77999-7

Is SEO Dying?

The answer is YES. For people who don't know, "SEO" means search engine optimization. In practice it means creating a webpage that has a better chance of being found and listed highly by Google and the other search engines.

A lot of website builders use SEO. A lot of people teach SEO. It is big business and big business want SEO to remain important so they will talk it up. But it is artificial.  Google doesn't like artificial methods that gets a webpage noticed. It simply wants the best content and webpages of any kind to be on the first page of a search irrespective of how good the SEO is because Google is a business and its purpose is to find the best on the internet without qualification. I guess that is common sense except for one modern exception: Google have been accussed of biasing their search results to favour those that make Google more money! As at August 2020, this has resulted in an enquiry by the US government.

SEO is dead because it allows bad sites to get good Google listings. Google does not like that. If you use Google Blogger (Blogspot) the free website building application, you can ignore SEO completely and it has no detrimentally effect in respect of Google's search listing and that is all that matters.

Recently Google downgraded websites that were not from branded names (e.g. Yahoo, About and Wikipedia) and which were created using the best SEO techniques. This is another sign that Google is bypassing the SEO sites. It wants the best not the best SEO.

Yes, SEO is dying and the businesses built around SEO, of which there are hundreds of thousands, are dying too - gradually. It is the beginning of the process. Website owners are still propositioned by SEO businesses but they are dying out too. They realise that their time is up. Google has always punished those who overdo SEO. It is called black hat SEO.

Google is the most important element of the internet. Please the company. Create a Blogger site. Work well. Write well. And make good content consistently and you can forget bloody stupid SEO! I feel I have to add an update. For many years now I have completely ignored SEO on the websites that I write for and manage. There has been no negative impact in terms of Google search results. In fact my experience tells me that if you overdo it, as I mention above, it has a negative impact on search results. It also slows down your writing and makes articles less natural and more artificial because you have to knit into the article the keyword. At best, you can add a little bit of SEO if you feel like tweaking the article but by and large I would ignore SEO in 2020. In fact it has been pretty much redundant for many years. Google has become too refined and sophisticated to be fooled by SEO. It doesn't need it. In the past it did but we're talking about 13 years ago. These are my observations based upon first-hand experience.

Are lions monogamous?

No. In this instance I will use the modern use of the word "monogamous" to mean one sexual partner. During estrous (estrus) the female will copulate with a male many times, on average every 25 minutes over four days or more. At the end of estrus they mate less often. As the male's desire wanes, the female "may seek additional partners". Accordingly the female lion, is not monogamous.

photo by imolcho

At this time other males get a chance to mate with this lioness indicating that male lions "share" females. Accordingly male lions are not monogamous either.

The larger more elderly males have more success in mating with a female than younger, smaller males. Not all males achieve copulation with a female. Lion prides are made up of related lions.

Associated page: Are cat polygamous?

Can lions climb trees?

Yes, lions can climb trees. The lions of Africa's Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania and of Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda "often spend the day resting in the branches of a tree."¹ - See lion range.

It is thought that lions do this to get above insect bites including bites from tsetse and Stomoxyx flies. These flies congregate around bushes below branch height.

Another reason why these lions climb trees is to escape buffalo and elephants and for cubs to escape dogs. These large animals are dangerous to lions.

Lion in tree Lake Manyara National Park - photo by Catalpa 34

Young lions are good tree climbers and play in trees sometimes. Lions, though, are mainly terrestrial, meaning that most of their activities are on the ground. Some wildcats are tree dwellers. They live in the trees in forests. One such cat is the small margay. Lions are also good swimmers when they need to be but less good than the tiger.

Note: (1) Wild Cats of the World by Mel and Fiona Sunquist - ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77999-7 buy this book!

Can a tiger and a lion mate?

The answer is, yes. In captivity people do put tigers and lions together in the same cage and hope that they will mate to produce a hybrid. The hybrid is called a liger. There are other versions of this hybrid. For example a white tiger crossed with a lion and so on.

The liger has hybrid vigor. It is a very large animal. The world's biggest individual cat is a liger called "Hercules". Doc Antle, a showman, cares for him. I don't know if he bred him. He lives in America.

Tiger and lion mated to produce Hercules a liger.

The liger is larger than either the tiger or lion. But the ligers that I have seen are flabby and look odd. And I don't mean that the coat pattern is odd although it is strange.

I mean that the body conformation is odd. I would not be surprised if there are some problems in breeding ligers that we don't hear about. As you can see Hercules is massive and it does not look right to me.

The liger is bred as a spectacle in a zoo. They are created for business purposes. There is no other reason for its creation and I don't like it one bit. It feels wrong to me; an abuse of two beautiful cats that would normally never meet up in the wild as the lion is found on the African continent and the tiger lives in Asia.