Liger goes to 'London' for a light lunch

However, he is in fact in the warm climate of the Freestyle Music Park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Walking round the mock-up English town that is a tribute to the British music invasion of the States in the 1960's,

Hercules struts his stuff round the village like a hipster from the swinging sixties. And in a graphic display of his incredible size and strength, Hercules stops for a spot of lunch from the top of an iconic double decker bus, eating his way through some of the 25 pounds of meat and gallon of water he needs each day.

The liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion and a tigress and borrow characteristics from both species. Ligers enjoy swimming which is a characteristic of tigers and are very sociable like lions.

The liger often has a very limited life span as well as birth defects and other mutations.

In the wild it is virtually impossible for lions and tigers to mate. Not only are they enemies likely to kill one another, but most lions are in Africa and most tigers in Asia.

Today there are also believed to be a handful of ligers around the world and a similar number of tiglons, the product of a tiger father and lion mother.

Tiglons are smaller than ligers and take on more physical characteristics of the tiger.

Other exotic hybrids include the zeedonk , a cross between a zebra and a donkey; the zorse or zebroid, a zebra/horse cross; and the beefalo, an American bison/ domestic cow cross.

Another rare creature is the wolphin, the offspring of a whale and a dolphin.

Back in the big cat world zoos in Japan, Germany and Italy have bred leopons, a male leopard/lioness cross, while Salzburg Zoo in Austria has bred jaguar/leopard hybrids known as lepjags.