The liger is distinct from the opposite hybrid called the tigon (of a male tiger and a lioness), and is the largest of all known extant felines.

In Animal Life and the World of Nature (1902–1903), A. H. Bryden described Hagenbeck's "lion-tiger" hybrids: It has remained for one of the most enterprising collectors and naturalists of our time, Mr. Carl Hagenbeck, not only to breed but to bring successfully to a healthy maturity, specimens of this rare alliance between those two great and formidable Felidae, the lion and tiger.

In 1948, LIFE magazine pictured "Shasta," a liger conceived and born at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City; its (future) parents had been rubbing noses through adjoining cage bars, and were permitted to cohabitate.

Very few melanistic tigers have ever been recorded, most being due to excessive markings (pseudo-melanism or abundism) rather than true melanism; no reports of black lions have ever been substantiated.

[12] These are genes that may or may not be expressed on the parent they are inherited from, and that occasionally play a role in issues of hybrid growth.

[13] Other big cat hybrids can reach similar sizes; the litigon, a rare hybrid of a male lion and a female tigon, is roughly the same size as the liger, with a male named Cubanacan (at the Alipore Zoo in India) reaching 363 kg (800 lb).

[14] The extreme rarity of these second-generation hybrids may make it difficult to ascertain whether they are larger or smaller, on average, than the liger.

In addition, female ligers may also attain great size, weighing approximately 320 kg (705 lb) and reaching 3.05 m (10 ft) long on average, and are often fertile.

[16][17] Hercules was featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, Inside Edition, and in a Maxim article in 2005, when he was only three years old and already weighed 408.25 kg (900.0 lb).

The Valley of the Kings Animal Sanctuary in Wisconsin had a male liger named Nook who weighed over 550 kg (1,213 lb).

[21] A ligress named Shasta was born at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on 14 May 1948 and died in 1972 at age 24.

[2][18] Hobbs, a male liger at the Sierra Safari Zoo in Reno, Nevada, lived to almost 15 years of age before succumbing to liver failure, and weighed 450 kg (990 lb).

[23] Panthera hybrids tend to experience a higher rate of injury and neurological disorder than non-hybrids.

Organ failure issues have been reported in ligers, in addition to neurological deficits, sterility, cancer, and arthritis.

[27] In September 2012, the Russian Novosibirsk Zoo announced the birth of a "liliger", the offspring of a liger mother and a lion father.

[3] The two species' ranges are known to overlap in India's Gir National Park, though no ligers were known to live there until the modern era.

[29] The range of the Caspian tiger has overlapped with that of the lion in places such as northern Iran and eastern Anatolia.