liger

I just found the perfect metaphor for modern human beings. Apparently, when you cross a male lion and a female tiger you produce what’s called a Liger—an animal three to four times the size of either of the species that produced it. The reason it’s so big is that a gene present in the male lion for increasing appetite (and growth) is not balanced by a gene typically passed on by the female lion for decreasing appetite. As a result, the Liger doesn’t know when to say when. Having such a large appetite is an obvious disadvantage in the wild where you run the risk of depleting your food sources (or becoming too slow to catch them), so these sluggish and unwary creatures can only exist within zoos and protective sanctuaries—kind of like us.