&gt;  In big cats a tigon, a lion-tiger cross, is bigger than either<p>I don&#x27;t think this is right. The hybrid with a lion father and tiger mother is the huge one, but the father comes first in the name of the hybrid; tigons (male tiger &#x2F; female lion) aren&#x27;t so large.<p>The reason for the difference is that male lions brand their offspring&#x27;s DNA with the urge to grow large, while female lions counter with the opposite urge. For a lion&#x2F;lion pairing, this balances out, but tigers don&#x27;t have the same war between the sexes going on, and the maternal tiger genetic contribution is defenseless against the paternal lion one.<p>Humans, by the way, do something similar: the same genetic defect causes &quot;Prader-Willi syndrome&quot; if it came from the father, and &quot;Angelman syndrome&quot; if it came from the mother.