I have been browsing various forums and threads. 

I have even searched up some animals on Wikipedia.

It seems many people doubt the Savanna Leopard's capabilities.

From this forum:

(09-08-2014, 05:17 AM)Pantherinae Wrote: First of all. I'm not wrong when I'm not proven wrong pckts. Not once have that happend! And I'm okey beeing wrong, if proven so. But on The rhino thing and different stuff I'm not, and can't You be okey with me not beeing proved so easaly! You should not belive everything You read neiather. 

No pictures of leopard killing an eland only a Kudu. 

On The zebra account, thanks that was very impressive, sadly we can't see The whole zebra! Again I would like to add something i'ts not that I'm saying a leopard can't kill a zebra or wildebeest, but I don't think it can ever happen.

 

(06-27-2014, 09:37 PM)Pantherinae Wrote:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Very impressive kill by a Cougar! An adult elk stag! Cougars seems to take down massive and more impressive prey than leopards.

Pantherinae Wrote:leopard kills cheetah! It's amazing that a cheetah can kill bigger prey than leopards, atleast what we have caught on tape, and leopards do have such little problem with killing a cheetah,  

cheetahs do tackle kudus at high speed chase so they are brought down in the chase while leopards do have to wrestle down prey with pure muscles! So that probably has something to with that. Also interesting to hear from long time Masai Mara expolrer that wildebeest's and Zebras do seem to fear cheetahs way more than leopards.

https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-felines-hunting


From another forum:

Quote: Cougars are known to take elk and big horn sheep as prey . So in a fight to the finish , the Cougar will defeat the leopard . 

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/animalsversesanimals/african-leopard-vs-cougar-t3893.html



From Wikipedia:

Quote:Although cheetahs and leopards also prey on greater kudus, they are unable to bring down a bull, and consequently target the more vulnerable cows and offspring. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_kudu

Quote:Though leopards do not usually feed on equids as in Africa, this may be because Persian leopards are larger and strong enough to prey on Asiatic wild asses.[9][10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onager


So what do you guys think?

Female blue bird vs house sparrow.

Yes I should have started this topic a long time ago... Because the herbivore dinosaurs are also fascinating, and we know clearly and really only a little about them.

Let us begin !

The parasaurolophus : ornithopod of the Late Cretaceous in North America, Alberta, New Mexico, Utah. Only known from a few specimens, it's on of the rarest hadrosaurid although famous through its look (exploited in the "Jurassic Parc" and "Jurassic world"serie of movies).

Different definitions of the term 'subspecies' exist, but the one that I will use here, derived from Study.com, is "a population of a species that is genetically and geographically different to another population of the same species."

In 2017, the Cat Classification Taskforce of the Cat Specialist Group, which can be said to include a "who's who" of experts on of cats, such as Shu-Jin Luo and Urs Breitenmoser, published a revision of subspecies of felids: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y

There are 2 main issues with the revision of 2017 that I can see:

1) The CSG admitted uncertainties regarding particular subspecies, such as for the bobcat and cheetah

2) Certain revisions, such a for the tiger and leopard, are controversial because they are not supported by all genetic assessments.

Hi, I have several questions about femur strength especially human femur. How much weight a femur can support vertically before breaking?

Second question, anyone who have extensive understanding about osteology, biology, etc. What does this article talk about? What are the points of the authors? Do they try to find the strength of femur or what? According to the link, not sure what's the point because English isn't my native language. It is said 1500 mpa or something like that. This is the article https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....2/ar.23796

The Nile crocodile is the largest crocodilian in Africa and is generally considered the second largest crocodilian after the Saltwater crocodile. Adult male Nile crocodiles usually range from 4 to 5 meters long and largest ones grow up to 5,5 meters long and weight up to a 1000 kilograms, females are a lot smaller than males 2,2 to 3,8 meters long with only a very small number that grow up to 4 meters long.
 In search for the largest crocodilian skulls in museums the largest veriafiable Nile crocodile skulls found were several housed in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, sourced from nearby Lake Chamo, which apparently included several specimens with a skull length more than 65 cm long (26 in) with the largest one 68,6 cm /27 in) in length with a mandibular length of 87 cm (34 in). Nile crocodiles with skulls this size are likely to measure in the range of 5,4 to 5,6 m (17 ft 9 in to 18 ft 4 in) which is also the length of the animals according to the museum where they were found. However larger skulls may exist, The detached head of an excepcionally large Nile crocodile (killed in 1968 and measuring 5,87 m (19 ft 3 in) in length was found to have weighed 166 kg (366 lb) including the large tendons used to shut the jaw. (Wikipedia)
Pictures taken from the book Crocodiles and Alligators (Charles A. Ross and Dr. Stephen Garnett)

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

 
 

This thread is for incidents and interactions where wild animals surprise people with different kind of co-operation/adoptions etc. No captive animals here or interactions between captive animals which have been raised together, only incidents from wild without people involved to development of situations.

I am not sure if this has been already posted here. Still this is a rare and very interesting incident because it looks like it, that this leopard cub died because of illness, not by other lions etc.




Quote" In news that will make your midweek blues worse, a leopard cub who was being reared by a lioness in Gujarat's Gir forest area has died. The leopard cub, named Mowgli, was under the care of a 7-year-old lioness, named Raksha, for the past 45 days." "Cub died due to congenital femoral hernia"

Whole article: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/gir-lioness-leopard-cub-dies-mowgli-1454920-2019-02-13

Lappet-faced Vultures or Nubian Vultures.

The Lappet-faced Vulture or Nubian Vulture, Torgos tracheliotus is an African Old World vulture belonging to the bird order Accipitriformes, which also includes eagles, kites, buzzards and hawks. It is the only member of the genus Torgos. A distinct subspecies T. t. negevensis occurs in the Sinai, the Negev desert and probably in north-west Saudi Arabia.

It is not closely related to the superficially similar New World vultures, and does not share the good sense of smell of some members of that group.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Description
It is about 95--115 cm (37--45 in) in body length, with a wingspan of 2.5--3 m (8.2--9.9 ft). Wild vultures, of the subspecies T. t. tracheliotus, range from 4.4 to 9.4 kg (9.8--20.7 lbs) and, in East Africa, average only 6.2 kg (13.6 lbs). On the other hand, captive vultures of the slightly larger T. t. negevensis subspecies, weighed 6.5--9.2 kg (14.3--20.2 lbs) in males and 10.5--13.9 kg (23.1--30.6 lbs) in females

Like many vultures, it has a bald head. The pink (sometimes reddish) coloration is a distinctive feature. The head is bald because a feathered head would become spattered with blood and other fluids, and thus be difficult to keep clean.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Diet / Feeding.
It is a scavenging bird, feeding mostly from animal carcasses animals which it finds by sight or by watching other vultures. Large carcasses, since they provide the most subsistence at a sitting, are preferred.

Lappet-faced Vultures, perhaps more than any other vulture, will on occasion attack young and weak living animals and raid the nests of other birds. Locally, Lesser Flamingoes, among others, have been reported to be culled by Lappet-faces in this way.

They are the most powerful and aggressive of the African vultures and other vultures usually cede a carcass to the Lappet-faced Vulture. This is often beneficial to the less powerful vultures because the Lappet-face can tear through the tough hides and muscles of large mammals that the others cannot penetrate, although hyenas are even more efficient in this regard.

www.beautyofbirds.com/lappetfacedvultures.html

To begin this new thread: Portrait of a proboscis monkey bachelor. The big-nosed monkey typically lives close to water and is the most prolific swimmer among the wild primates. It has webbed feet, is happy to cross rivers and is capable of swimming up to 20 meters underwater. You sometimes see it jump from trees straight into the river, landing with a loud belly flop. Borneo.

The existence of the tiger on Borneo has long been a cryptic and controversial discussion. The lack of modern, confirmed records regarding the presence of the tiger on Borneo has brought upon much speculation as to why such is the case. Considering the close proximity of Borneo to the rest of islands the tiger inhabits in the Malay archipelago, it seemed out of place for the tiger to never have been on Borneo. In 1999, Meijard speculated on why the tiger was not recorded on Borneo. He gave four possibilities:
1.  The tiger never reached Borneo. One reason may have been the open woodland Savannah in parts of the Sunda shelf creating a barrier for the jungle dwelling tiger to reach what is now Borneo. Another possibility may have been that the tiger arrived on the Malay archipelago only after Borneo had been separated from the rest of the islands by the rising sea levels. 
2. The tiger did once occur on Borneo and are now extinct. Borneo, compared to the rest of the Malay archipelago, is less nutrient dense. Such may have predisposed any population of tigers to extinction.
3. The tiger did exist on Borneo, undiscovered. Meijard (1999) speculated that perhaps a very dispersed population may be able to exist undetected theoretically.
4. The tiger was imported to Borneo. Meijard (1999) noted no record of such an importation exists.

In terms of the fossil record, prior to 2007 all records of the tiger on Borneo were controversial. Hooijer (1963) mentioned a canine. However, it was argued the canine may have been imported from elsewhere. Harrison (1998) mentioned a navicular the author attributed to a tiger. However, no photograph or measurements were published to ascertain such an identification. Finally, in 2007, Piper and team reassessed the collections from the Niah caves, a site in northern Borneo. Here they provided incontrovertible evidence of the presence of the tiger in Borneo.



The specimen, Niah W/E1, was a small tiger, dated to about 13,000 years. At this time, Borneo was still connected to the rest of the Sunda shelf. 

This year, a second confirmed tiger from Borneo was described. Dated to about 22,000 years, this tiger was found in southern Borneo along the Kahayan river (Sherani 2019).


As compared to the Niah Caves specimen, the Kahayan river specimen (SFC-1345), was much larger. It too would have resided in Borneo when the area was still connected to the rest of the Sundaland. Morphologically, SFC-1345 groups well with extant tigers, especially the southern forms of P. t. corbetti and P. t. sumatrae. 

 
Thus, it can be safely said that the tiger existed on the land that is now Borneo in at least the final parts of the Late Pleistocene. Thus, this article sits in the Pleistocene Predators section. What is still up for debate is whether the tiger survived on Borneo once the region became a true island after the rise of sea levels at the turn of the Pleistocene-Holocene. Based on the dramatic downsizing of the tiger as depicted by the striking difference in size between SFC-1345 and Niah W/E1, extinction pressures such a decreased prey biomass, human pressures, and island isolation had probably begun exerting their effects by the end of Late Pleistocene (Sherani 2019). These pressures may have pushed the tiger beyond the edge of extinction by the time the Holocene and associated records of human history came along. Nonetheless, perhaps the stories and collectibles of the locals of Borneo are genuine and the Bornean tiger became the cryptic ghost that it is now much later than the fossil record shows. Such speculation leads the mind to theorize, and maybe even hope, that Meijard's theory of an undetected population of Bornean tigers that may still prowl what is left of the island's jungles holds true. Whatever may be the case, the record of the tiger on Borneo is a paradigm for the diversity and gigantism of the Pleistocene and the loss and mystery of the Holocene.  

References:
Harrison, T. (1998). Vertebrate faunal remains from the Madai caves (MAD 1/28), Sabah, East Malaysia. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, 17, 85-92.

Hooijer, D.A. 1963. Further ‘Hell’ animals from Niah. Sarawak Museum Journal 11: 196-200.

Meijaard E. 1999. The Bornean tiger; speculation on its existence. Cat News. 30:12–15.

Piper, P. J., Cranbrook, E. O., & Rabett, R. J. (2007). Confirmation of the Presence of the Tiger Panthera tigris (L.). Malayan Nature Journal, 59(3), 259-267.

Sherani, S. (2019). Short notes on a second tiger (Panthera tigris) from Late Pleistocene Borneo. Historical Biology, 1-5.

This article is part of a new series published at WildFact. Comments, questions, and the like regarding this article can be posted here.