The size of the Barbary lion

[GuateGojira]

(01-19-2022, 06:36 PM)acutidens150 Wrote: So, except for the 243 kg male, there is literally nothing that we have from wild Barbary lions?

Correct, and that is sad as this animal got extinct in the wild and no one took the time to actually measure it and record real weights, just estimations and skin measurements.

Even worst, this figure of not entirely reliable for the following reasons:
1 - The record is from 1859, which is interesting as very few weights were recorded in those dates, specially in the north of Africa.
2 - There are no measurements recorded for the specimen, nor pictures, which do not add weight to its reliability.
3 - The lion was killing cattle, and cattle killers are normally heavier than regular ones, sadly Blakesley did not provided more details of the case.

Between 2004 -2005, when several scientists when together to check all the Amur tiger weights in litterature, they got to the conclution that if the record is not from first hand, reliable recorded with background information, measurements or at least pictures, the figures are not reliable (Slaght et al., 2005). Under this light, this only figure of 243 kg for the Barbary lion will be clasiffied as "unreliable", but even then I use it for reference in my comparative image, with the only difference that now I put an interrogation symbol "?" to show that the figure is not 100% accepted.

This case is not the only one, for example, there are no measurements and weights for the Bali tigers (the figures from Mazák (1981) often quoted are just his estimations based in the few available skulls) and there is only one weight recorded from a wild Javanese tiger. Reply