A male tiger and female lion, both over two years old, have fallen in love at a safari park in southernmost China's Hainan Province.

This photo shows a male tiger and a female lion living together at the Hainan Tropical Wildlife Park and Botanical Garden, December 29, 2007.

The website Photobase reported that the Hainan Tropical Wildlife Park and Botanical Garden purposely put the tiger and lion in to live together since they were just two months old, in order to produce a hybrid cub.

The experiment is going well, but whether they will finally mate and give birth to a baby is not yet known, the report said.

The park once matched a male lion with a female tiger, resulting in the birth of nine lion-tiger hybrid cubs.

(CRI January 3, 2008)