Amur Tigers

[burqin]

In May this year, an Amur tiger, later on named "Wandashan 1", dispersed from Sikhhot Alin in Russia into Northeast China. He smashed a car window and got captured and conducted with various health checkups. The results showed he was fine. And news reports indicate the tiger was two-year old and 225kg. After a quarantine of 45 days the tiger was release to a reserve located in Jilin Province. Unfortunately for animal fans the original copy of the medical report cannot be found at any web links. So we don't know whether the medical report includes the most intriguing thing in here: the 225kg weight record. Normally we cannot imagine a tiger medical report without the measurement of weight. It's quite reasonable to suppose the 225kg is a quite reliable figure. However, a two-year, 225kg tiger is nearly a record-hitting existence, even for the much healthier Bengal population (averaging at 210kg for male adults), let alone for the much disturbed Amur population (averaging at 176.4kg for male, according a Russian report in 2005, which set a asymptotic at 222.3kg for Amur). We know a Bengal male tiger weighing 150kg in his third year has a good chance of growing to 200kg+ in his adulthood, a third larger than the 150kg at the roughly starting point of the 225kg Wandashan 1. Thus Wandashan 1 could reach 300kg without considerable difficulty. Super-extraordinary case needs super-extraordinary confirmation. Is the 225kg believeable? Reply