The size of the Barbary lion

[GuateGojira]

On the skulls of the Barbary lion:

 

At the beginning of this topic, I presented all the available evidence about the size of the Barbary lion, together with a few pictures of the size of adult lions in the Rabat Zoo.

 

I also stablished that the measurements from the lions presented by Brehm (1915) are not from "stuffed" specimens like some "guy" in Wikipedia posted, but from captive animals measured in the flesh. This is because all the measurements from great cats that Brehm quoted are from live animals. I also searched all the available literature regarding these lions and concluded that none of those exaggerated sizes of lions over 230-250 cm in head-body are reliable and that the statement of weighs of up to 660 lb (300 kg) are just hearsays and there is no reliable evidence of that, just like the old reports of "giant" Amur tigers (at least in this last case we have pictures of hunted tigers of great size). In fact, that is the same conclusion of Dr Yamaguchi about the reports of "big" lions in Algeria (Yamaguchi & Haddane, 2002).

 

Under this evidence and the few data available, it will be unnecessary to continue with this investigation, however there is one point that disturbed me and that needed to be clarified and are the skulls from this animal. Yamaguchi & Haddane (2002), quoting Mazák (1969), states that the largest skull from this population was of c.360 mm, which is smaller than the maximum of other lion populations (South Africa, up to 402 mm according with Roberts (1951)). However, an investigation of J. H. Mazák (2010) provides an average of 372.33 +/- 37.29 mm (n=3) for males and 318.25 +/- 13.79 mm (n=2) for females, the largest of the study. In the document "Geographical variation and phylogenetics of modern lions based on craniometric data" he stated that all the specimens were from "wild origin" which leads me to believe that all the skulls were from wild animals per se. However, when I studied the documents of Dr Yamaguchi and Dr Barnett about some studies of lion skulls I found that in fact ALL the skulls from the collections of Barbary lions are from "Captive specimens".

 

In the document "Divided infraorbital foramen in the lion (Panthera leo): its implications for colonization history, population bottlenecks, and conservation of the Asian lion (P. l. persica)" from 2009 (see Appendix 1) Yamaguchi and his team present a list of the specimens which corroborated that all specimens came from wild origin but it doesn't says if the animals were hunted, just captured from the wild and latter transported to captivity, or just the origin of the parents of those specimens. However in a previous document "Ancient DNA analysis indicates the first English lions originated from North Africa" from 2008 (see Table 1) Dr Barnett and his team already corroborated that all the skulls from Barbary lions were from captive origin, including the two "new" specimens from London Tower. This indicates that the specimens from 2008 and the new added in the list in 2009 by Barnett and Yamaguchi all came from captive specimens. It is interesting that from the large sample Dr J. H. Mazák only used 3 males and 2 females for his study, probably because those were the only "complete" ones (other were broken, thus incomplete for analysis).

 

Now that we stablished that while some specimens from the Barbary sample actually came from wild specimens but ended its existence in captivity, we must remember that captivity in lions may change its morphology, especially if those animals reached the adulthood in the confinement (Hollister, 1917). Similar thing happen with the large lion skull measured by Mazák from a specimen from Ethiopia that was captured when young and died in captivity. The skull of that particular lion looked like that of a "horse", @peter can talk about that skull. In the following table I am going to compare the skull from that captive specimen from Ethiopia with the largest (in length) wild specimens reported by Roberts (1951) from South Africa, figures in mm.

 

                                   Mazák specimen         Ngamiland      Kruger

Greatest length                       402                  401                  395

Condylobasal length              377                  345                  348

Bizygomatic breath                258.5               247                  251

Mandible length                     285                  258                  257

 

The largest bizygomatic breath came from two males from Kruger of 256 mm each (the two specimens were smaller than the one in the previous table here). It is interesting that while there is not too much difference in greatest length, the condylobasal length and the bizygomatic is larger in the captive specimen, which corroborate the report of Hollister. This explains the large size of the specimens in J. H. Mazák tables, compared with other wild lions.

 

Sadly, J. H. Mazák do not presented any ranges, so I previously estimated that the largest Barbary lion skull probably measured between 410-420 mm adding the standard deviation to the average, but this procedure have a margin of error. However in the document itself J. H. Mazák provides us with the condylobasal length (CBL) of the skulls measured (presented in Log values), which can be very useful. Check this:

*This image is copyright of its original author

 

 

It seems that there is not to much diference between the males, only the males from South Africa approach the large average CBL of the males of Barbary (and also the Cave “lion” specimens). So using the Logarithmic results we can see that the maximum and minimum CBL of the male Barbary lions are 363.1 mm and 309.0 respectively. Interestingly the smallest male Barbary skull reported by Mazák (1969) had a CBL of 309.6, which means that probably the CBL of the largest Barbary lion was of c.364 mm at the most. Important to mention is the point 107 in the graphic, which is the large skull measured by Mazák (CBL 377 mm), classified among the North East Africa specimens.

 

A Condylobasal length of c.364 mm is a large skull, but this means that it was a large animal? Well, not necessarily. Remember that we are taking about captive animals, an example is a large skull from a captive male lion Id CN7321, it had a CBL of 359.7 mm, but the head-body length in straight line was of 185 cm and a tail length of 95 cm (280 cm in total, like the largest Barbary lion reported). About the GSL, we will need to use only captive specimens in order to make a correct estimation, and using 6 specimens from Allen, Hollister and Mazák, I get a GSL of 401.3 mm (range 398.1 – 412 mm.). Using the only two captive male lions that I have, I get a Head-body length of 200-203 cm, which suggest a large specimen, but remember that I am using only two specimens, so is only a rogue estimation.

 

Mazák (1969) in the document “The Barbary Lion, Panthera leo leo (Linnaeus, 1758); some systematic notes, and an interim list of the specimens preserved in European museums” reported only 4 skulls in that moment, the largest was a male with a GSL estimated between 358-362 mm as it was broken (Yamaguchi & Hadanne (2002) reported it at c.360 mm.), check this image from his document:

*This image is copyright of its original author

 

However now we know that there are more specimens available, so that is why we have new records. The interesting thing is that using a real CBL reported in the paper of J. H. Mazák, the largest Barbary lion skull is smaller than the large male from Ethiopia measured by Mazák (2013 – reprint of 1983), and it was a captive specimen. Barbary lions in captivity, and also Asian/Indian lions, shows sometimes disproportionately large heads, which suggest that this large skull belonged to a male between 190-200 cm in head-body length, which is not far from the range already stablished by Brehm. In this case, this new information prove, again, that the Barbary lions was not the largest subspecies of lions and for the contrary, they fit very well with the size of current East-South African lions.

 

New Conclusion:

Using the little but reliable information available, the Barbary lion had a head-body length of 160-190 cm, a shoulder height of 80-100 cm and a greatest skull length with an average of 372.33 mm and a maximum of about 401 mm. These sizes are about the same than any other lion population, included Indian and Sub-Saharan lions, although it is among the largest skulls reliable recorded.

With the weight issue, there is only one reliable weight of 243 kg, which is large but, again, not exceptional in comparison with all the other populations of lions, its average weight was probably the same than the similarly sized populations in East Africa, which will be about 170-180 kg. There is only a single report of Gérard of males weighing up the 270-300 kg, but there are simple uncorroborated reports and are completelly unreliable (remember the old records of the Amur tigers).

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