Doing some research Species, Evolution and Hybrids:
"Zonkies are pretty much my favorite animals"
Republished in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008
A FEW MILES FROM THE ENDLESS MALLS and garish tourist attractions of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, there's an exotic-animal preserve that houses a group of four-year-old liger brothers named Hercules, Zeus, Vulcan, and Sinbad. Ligers, the offspring of a lion father and tiger mother, are the world's largest cats, weighing up to half a ton each—double the heft of either parent. They're hybrids, and you won't see them in accredited American zoos, which look askance at letting different species breed. But that's how it is with hybrids: They don't get much respect and they're easy to miss, even when they're right under your nose.
And yet, when you start looking around, they're everywhere.
Zorses, wholphins, tigons, and beefaloes. Lepjags, zonkeys, camas, and bonanzees. ....
http://outsideonline.com/outside/cul...animals-1.html
also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/sc...q2NUvzABY+TU9w