An extremely rare cross between a tiger and a lion (liger) is born in a travelling zoo in southern Russia, one of only a few dozen of the animals believed to exist.

This two-month-old liger cub, is named Tsar. The zoo director Erik Airapetyan informed  the media that it is the offspring of a tigress Princess and lion Caesar.

"They have been living together for a long time now and know each other very well. When the tigress was on heat, she didn't have any other choice," he further said.

The cub has the beige fur of a lion and the stripes of a tiger and is currently being fed on milk from one of the zoo's goats. Ligers can grow to be the biggest cat in the animal kingdom, weighing more than 400 kilograms.

A liger called Hercules in the United States is currently listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest feline in the world, with the weight of 418 kilograms and length of 3.33 meters.