ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[peter]

(04-12-2022, 06:23 PM)Pckts Wrote: You’d still need real verification of this males alleged weight.

Also, do you have the sub adult Amurs weight claim?

The post of 'Apex Titan'

I'm preparing a post on Feng Limin. I scanned an interesting article and added information I recently got from our member 'Betty'. The database of 'Betty', who is able in Chinese and has access to solid information (peer-reviewed documents), is extended and reliable.   

According to 'Betty', tigers have been weighed in northeastern China in the last decade. One of them was the young adult male recently discussed in this forum (referring to the male that 'attacked' a field worker and smashed a car window). He really was 225 kg (497-498 pounds). At least 2 others reached or exceeded 250 kg (552 pounds).  

I agree peer-reviewed documents are more reliable than anything else. The information posted by 'Apex Titan', however, is from a reliable source: Feng Limin. According to 'Betty', he has been active on a Chinese platform. In one of his contributions, he wrote one male tiger captured (and weighed) by one of his collegues was 270 kg (597 pounds). I'll ask 'Betty' to post the link in this thread. 

Size of Amur tigers today

As to the size of male Amur tigers today. Most of those who know think tigers in the northern part of Primorye (Khabarowski Krai) are larger than their relatives in the southern part. I'm not only referring to the famous male known as 'The Beast', but also to the observations of Hafner. His great documentary was recently discussed in two posts in this thread. 

Here's the photograph posted by our former mod 'Wolverine' some years ago. This male was photographed well west of all reserves:

*This image is copyright of its original author

This male, also known as 'The Beast' because of his size, has a pad width of 13,5 cm:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Here he's again. The old male brown bear next to him, although a tad shorter, is more robust and heavier. Although they're neighbours, the one who knows both said there never was a problem:

*This image is copyright of its original author

One could say the table published in 2005 ('Morphological indicators (cm) of adult specimens of wild Amur tiger, caught in the Sichote-Alin Biosphere Reserve and its environs; data for the 1992-2004 biennum', in: 'Tigers in the Sichote-Alin Zapovednik: Ecology and conservation', Miquelle (DG), Smirnov (EN) and Goodrich (JM), 2005) was misleading to a degree. The information, to be sure, was correct, but the table included young adults and a male in bad condition. If the information about the weight of the males recently captured in northeastern China is correct, researchers may need to rewrite the chapter about the size of wild Amur tigers today. The maximum weight (males) apparently well exceeds 212 kg.

Size of Amur tigers in the recent past (1890-1970)

Appendix 6.1 ('Historical (up to 1970 g) literature data about the weight of Amur tiger with the observations on their reliability') in Chapter 6 of 'Tigers in the Sichote-Alin Zapovednik; ecology and conservation' (Vladivostok, 2005, in Russian) has information about 44 males mentioned in papers, articles and books published in the period 1903-1992. Of these 44, 8 exceeded 300 kg. They ranged between 320-390 kg. This is without the tiger shot in 1943 near the Sungari river (Manchuria) by a member of Jankowski's team. That tiger, 11.6 in total length measured 'over curves', was estimated at 300-350 kg ('Der Tiger', Mazak (V), 1983). 

A wild male Amur tiger exceeding 300 kg always was and will be exceptional, but the photograph in Mazak's book shows an exceptional male and the tables about the size of captive Amur tigers I recently posted in this thread suggest large (non-obese) males range between 270-320 kg. That is without the 4 tigers exceeding 350 kg in Chinese facilities (referring to information I got from 'Betty'). 

It's not superfluous to add that those able to get to an educated opinion (forest officers, hunters and writers) a century ago agreed captive tigers do not compare to their wild relatives. The reason is adult wild tigers are specialists. As a general rule, only the most able get to adulthood. This wasn't the case in British India only. The conditions in China (Manchuria), Russia and Korea, if anything, were as selective, if not more so.  

Exceptional individuals 

Over the years, I collected a lot of information about the size of wild and captive big cats. All in all, I'd say the differences between tigers in northern India, lions in southwestern Africa and tigers in the Russian Far East are quite limited at the level of averages (5-10%), but exceptions seem to be more common in tigers. For some reason, exceptional individuals are more often seen in the Russian Far East and northeastern China than in other regions, including India.   

This is what those able to get to an opinion (collectors, keepers, hunters, trainers and big cat biologists) told me as well. In large subspecies, the difference between an average male and an exceptional male (referring to weight) is 25-45%, but in Amur tigers the difference can be as much as 60%, at times considerably more. The number of exceptions and the amount of deviation seem to explain most of the difference at the level of averages.  

What I'm saying is it's quite likely wild Amur tigers today sizewise more or less compare to their relatives shot a century ago, including the exceptions. The effects of the population bottleneck (referring to the extermination of tigers in Korea, Manchuria and most of the Russian Far East in the first decades of the previous century) on the size of wild Amur tigers seems to be limited. One could, therefore, say conditions and population size could be as important as the loss of genetic information, but that's an assumption only. 

Tables and decisions  

If the big tiger recently weighed in northeastern China is confirmed in a peer-reviewed document, Baikov's 560-pound (254 kg) tiger will no longer top the official table. That tiger, by the way, was shot in 1911 in the same region. Another tiger (224 kg or 495 pounds) was accepted as well. All others he shot (228,5 kg; 320 kg; 163,6 kg; 147 kg; 130,6 kg; 160 kg; 390 kg; 250 kg; 260 kg; 325 kg; 325 kg and 240 kg) were classified as 'unreliable'. This although the 228,5 kg tiger was disembowelled before it was weighed (...). 

When I posted the tables about captive Amur tigers, I wrote about tables and decisions. Most of them have an arbitrary character, no matter what you try. Anyhow. The first tiger below was accepted by biologists. The second wasn't even mentioned. This in spite of the photograph and the details in Mazak's book (referring to the third edition).   

Here's the 560-pound (254 kg) tiger shot by Baikov near the Korean border in 1911:

*This image is copyright of its original author

And here's the immense tiger shot in the summer of 1943 near the Sungari river (Manchuria) by Sin-En-Tschzin, a member of Jankowski's team:  

*This image is copyright of its original author

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