This is a page on the biggest and baddest cat facts written for children and people who like to read plain English.
Biggest Cat
The biggest cat is half tiger and half lion. The mother is a tiger and the father is a lion. His name is Hercules and he is enormous. Normally lions and tigers do not mate so a person put a lion and tiger in the same cage together. They mated. Their kitten was Hercules. People call cats that are half lion and half tiger “ligers”. This is a made-up word. Right now, in 2013, Hercules is still alive. He weighs about 904 lb. He is a bit fat as you can see in the picture on this page.
The biggest cat that is born naturally is a Siberian tiger. There is lots of stuff about the biggest Siberian tiger and how much they weigh and how long they are. The trouble is we don’t really know if the facts are true. Let’s say that big Siberian tigers can weigh between about 475 lb to maybe, up to about 1,000 lbs for a very fat Siberian tiger in a cage, in a zoo! The next biggest wild cat is the Bengal tiger. The heaviest Bengal tiger weighed 569 lbs.
Biggest Pet Cat
The biggest pet cat is Magic, a Savannah cat. She is 17.1 inches tall at the shoulder. In 1950, the biggest pet cat on weight was a moggie called “Clauz”. He weighed almost 40 lbs. These days there are no world record fattest cats because it makes people overfeed their cats to try and win the record. This is bad for cats.
Baddest Cats
The baddest cats are the man-eating cats. We have to be fair to cats. If a big wild cat kills a person it is because the cat had to do it. Perhaps the cat was injured or sick. Normally wild cats don’t kill people because people are not prey for wild cats. “Prey” means the animals that wild cats attack and eat for food. However, if a big cat gets a taste for humans, he may go on and kill more people.
“Man-eating cats” means big cats that catch people, kill them and eat them.
Leopard Man-eaters
Leopards are clever cats. Some people are more frightened of leopards than the much bigger tiger. Leopards are bold. They might enter a house to kill their victim. The most famous man-eating leopard was called the Panar leopard. It is said that he killed 400 people! This was around 1910. This famous leopard was hunted and shot by a famous hunter: Jim Corbett. A tiger reserve in India is named after him. Another famous leopard, the leopard of Rudraprayag killed 125 people.
Lion Man-eaters
Lions kill less people than tigers and leopards. A famous man-eating lion was white. He was called “Chiengi Charlie”. He was killed by a person in 1909. This lion lived in the north of an African country called Kenya and also across the border to Uganda. He killed several people. “Several” means more than two people but not a lot of people.
In 1989, a lion chased a dog into someone’s home, saw a 10 year old boy and ate him. The lion was shot by the boy’s father. The lion was hungry because the animals he would have eaten no longer existed because they had been shot by people.
Two man-eating lions called the “Lions of Tsavo” killed and ate about 35 people in Africa. They were shot dead in 1898 by John Patterson. It took about nine bullets to kill one of the lions.
Tiger Man-eaters
There are more tiger man-eaters than any other cat. There is a famous place, were tigers live, that is in two countries, India and Bangladesh. It is called the “Sundarbans”. People also live in this area. Between 1975 and 1989, 521 people were killed by tigers in the Sundarbans. Most tigers attack people from behind when the person is facing away from the tiger. If people wear a mask that puts a human face on the back of their head the tiger does not attack. This protects people in this area.
Often man-eating tigers are old or injured so they can’t catch their normal prey. They kill people because they are easier to catch.
Mountain Lion Man-eaters?
Mountain lions normally move away from people. They almost never attack people and they don’t eat people. Between 1890 and 1989 mountain lions attacked 36 people. Eleven of these people were killed. 8 out of 10 of the people who were killed (80%) were kids. Most mountain lions that attack people are sick and skinny.
Very interesting site. I’ve always been a cat lover seeing my first kitten!
Thank you for pointing out the wisdom and History of these wonderful animals!
I think, like some dogs, cats can tell and feel if a person is Ill.
Thanks Olga. Yes, a lot of people believe cats are detect illness in their human companion.
A brilliant article striking in its simplicity therefore very easy to read and understand, not only for children but for adults too.
Yes some sad pictures, it’s terrible what some people do to animals, sometimes through ignorance but sometimes by being deliberately cruel, just because they can!
We all agree that the pictures of shot big cats are sad because this should not happen. The circumstances under which it does happen are man-made.
Clauz is an abused cat really and Hercules is a freak. Human stuff.
Poor animals. This is a very sad article underneath. Poor people who got eaten too. The only one who I feel ‘less’ sorry for is Magic. Poor Clauz – he looks uncomfortable and his ears are back in the photo – and he is in front of a food bowl of course. I wonder if he was allowed outside. I would guess being the 1950s that he was allowed out but it’s unusual that he would get like that if he wasn’t locked inside. Poor big guy. I wish things like that didn’t happen. It’s so sad.
Absolutely there is tons of sadness behind this article. The fact that people insist on working in close proximity to tigers in the Sundarbans and because these tigers have been forced to live there – it is an unnatural place for a tiger because it is a sea water swamp – the tiger occasionally attacks people because he is sick or has been injured by a person or has no prey to eat. The whole man-eating tiger problem is entirely man made!
Hercules is an abomination for me! Totally unnatural creature. His extraordinary size seems to be due to hybrid vigor. Cross breading produces larger offspring sometimes. He has a paunch though. Lazy life I guess.
All that said, I think kids will find it interesting because kids are interested in the biggest and the baddest!