Ligers and Blindness
Are ligers blind? Well if they are blind, certainly they will not be able to see and recognize objects around their surroundings. Similarly; some rumors also make a huge buzz that ligers are prone to different kinds of genetic eye diseases and because of that they have a huge amount of difficulty in spotting objects. What are those genetic eye diseases? What is their nature? There is no information about this and they do seem to be just a myth just floating all around through some paid media stuff. In our studies about ligers at ligerworld.com; we haven't witnessed any liger in the world. So this takes our research to specifically conclude are ligers are definitely not blind at all.
Take an example of the longest living liger Shasta on earth, which lived for 26 years. In its lifespan of 26 years, this female liger has never experienced any eyesight problems.
Hobbs was also a famous liger which lived for 15 to 17 years. Again no reports of blindness or any eyesight problem. According to one of the trainer of the Hobbs, its vision was so bright and sharp that it could view its trainer who used to live in a house just near the sanctuary where it used to live.
Samson was another famous liger, and again not evens a single report of regarding bad vision or poor eyesight.
Let's start from Myrtle Beach Safari, South Carolina in USA. They had bred maximum numbers of ligers in the world and yet none of the liger at Myrtle Beach Safari was found to be having blindness or any eye diseases. Let's move across USA, where; there are more than 50 ligers in different zoos, and none of the liger was found to be blind in the pursuit of ligers by a website named as ligerzoos.com. Russia is also a home to ligers in captivity as well, but all the ligers which we have witnessed so far in Russia were not blind at all. Similarly Korea and China has bred oodles of ligers and yet still none of the ligers born at those regions have been considered as a blind liger. Therefore; all of these examples of ligers from all over the world do help us to conclude that ligers are not blind.
So the question is who is the one who is highlighting this blindness myth for the ligers without any scientific evidence? The answer is simple; which is The So Called Animal Rights Activists (Not Everyone but there are some who always prefer to talk out of the world and out of the context; we are talking about them)! These individuals have their personal agenda to malign ligers to maximum and this personally allows them to reach any limit. Blindness myth is one such maligning factor in which these guys have stretched themselves out of the limits. National Geographic has taken into account a lot of positives and negatives about ligers but not in any of their stance they have even pointed about genetic diseases and blindness about the ligers.
One thing to remember here is that lions and tigers are both colorblind. So if lions and tigers are colorblind therefore; there is full possibility that ligers will also be colorblind as well and ligers basically are colorblind. So what these so called Animal Rights Activists have done is that they have taken colorblindness from the context of the liger traits and reduced this phrase to only blind and associated it with the ligers. This is how these individuals are playing their games to malign the image of the ligers and that too with the help of some paid advertisement and media. Ligers are definitely colorblind but they are never blind, and whoever labels them as blind has to come up with scientific evidence and a proof.
Similarly; tiger cubs are completely blind at the time of their births. Liger cubs are also blind at the time of their birth as well. This blindness lasts for about one week or so on. So ligers do inherit blindness for about a week from their mothers (tigress) but this doesn't mean that ligers are blind throughout their lives. So to exploit thing up; what liger haters did is that they have associated blindness phrase completely with the ligers. Otherwise; liger cubs and mature ligers have perfect vision and they are not blind at all from a genetic perspective.
