Amur Tigers

[Apollo]

Hi Everyone,

I like to repost what I posted in Tiger videos only thread and also add some more points.


When it comes to Bengals and amurs, the old hunting records and the modern scientific records all show that bengals were heavier animals than amurs.
The silght difference in body length in favor of amurs may be due to different measuring procedures.
IMHO the Northern bengals in the Terai belt along with Northeastern Bengals (Kaziranga, Orang, Manas etc excluding Sunderbans) should be the biggest and heaviest living cats.

You have to remember that even Bengals had a very hard time in the past. They were decimated in hundreds by the Britishers and the Indian Maharajas after the introduction of rifles.
Even amurs were not hunted in that scale.
In Terai arc, Assam and Western ghats during hunting expeditions hundreds of Bengals were killed in weeks time. Regional extinctions started occuring and large genetic lineages were lost forever.


If you want to talk about ancient bengals and amurs before iceage. I think @GrizzlyClaws is the man. 
According genetic studies, genetic bottlenecking occured in both the subspecies during the end of the iceage.


Regarding Manchurian tigers there are no solid scientific evidence showing they are bigger than amurs from other parts, but the old hunters and natives say that.
Since we are able to see variations in Southern, central, northwest, northeast and northern bengals, it is safe to assume that amurs also showed some degree of variations.

For any large amur (size and weight) hunted in the wild (old or new doesnt matter) we have equally large and bigger bengals hunted in India, Nepal. The records shows this.
For any enormous giant amur found in old hunting pictures we can match that easily with the giant bengals hunted in India, Nepal.
Other than this we dont have much evidence to work with in regards to the size difference between amurs and bengals in the wild.
Anything else is pure speculation and personal preference.
When it comes to modern scientific records in the wild, its the bengals which were bigger.


Now regarding genetic depression between amurs and bengals, I see you all compare it at a whole subspecies level.
Well that doesnt work in Bengals that way, because there are several small genetically isolated populations in Bengals which were much more genetically inbred and descended from a much more smaller population.

Example: The entire Northwest population of Bengals (Ranthambore, Sariska, Kuno, Sawaimadhpur etc) descended from not more than 5 to 10 tigers at the very best.The first tiger in Ranthambore was seen by forest officials after 3 years of it being announced as a tiger reserve.

Bengals were hunted and decimated by the old British and Indian hunters, the hunting stopped because there were very very few to no tigers found in the forests. 
Several hunters and there men were unable to find Bengals even after sweeping the entire forests because there numbers dwindled so low.
This is the case in westernghats, terai, central, northeast, northwest and every where in India.
The tiger numbers given during the begining of project tiger were all false and wrong.


Remember most of the tigers what they call amurs or bengals are not purbred animals at all.
It was a trend in captivity to call big tigers to be amurs and smaller tigers to be bengals. That was the reason for all these confusion.
Its just like calling bigmaned lions to be barbaries.
Most of the freak specimens what you see all over the world are crossbred tigers.
Indochinese tigers were also classified as Bengals until 1950s.
There are very few pure Bengals in captivity outside India, Nepal and Bhutan (let alone northern and northeastern bengals).
The Indian zoos are badly maintained (animals were not kept in ideal conditions).

The best way to approach this is, look at the purebred and studbook amurs compare there size with wild bengals.
Remember the captive amurs wont have the preybase problems and it will also have the luxury to carry more weight because its not necessary to be very fit to catch its prey. Meaning the captive amurs will definitely have an advantage of growing bigger due to better and easier nutritional availability than wild bengals.

But for our surprise the results were not much different captive purebred amurs average around the same size as wild bengals. I guess it explains alot.
This shows how special Northern and Northeastern bengals were when it comes to pure size. Reply