The World’s Largest Living Cat
With a name like Hercules, you know he’s got to be big. But at 922 pounds,
big is an understatement for the world’s largest living cat, according to the
2014 Guinness Book of World Records. Hercules is a liger — the hybrid
offspring of a male lion and a tigress – who lives at the Myrtle Beach Safari
wildlife preserve in South Carolina. He is 131 inches long, and measures 49
inches tall at the shoulder.
Ligers, which do not exist in the wild, can grow to twice the size of their
parents and weigh about a hundred times more than the average house cat.
The safari, also known as TIGERS –- The Institute of Greatly Endangered and
Rare Species –- where tours are given by reservation, is owned by Bhagavan
“Doc” Antle, who also founded the Rare Species Fund in 1982, to help
endangered wildlife around the world such as elephants, rhinos, orangutans
and other big cats.
