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

[GuateGojira]

I agree that Dr Vratislav Mazák is, by far, the best source for skull size (he said that in his document of 1981), but about weight and length, I think his data is outdated and mixed.

The principal problem is that he don't quoted many of his sources. I don't know if in his book "Der Tiger" he do it, but in the document of 1981, he did not. Other thing is that he mixed captive with wild specimens, which creates confusion about the origin of many of his weights and length. Finally, the modern studies on Bengal and Amur tigers have new figures that most be used instead of those from him.

From my part, in the case of the Amur tiger, the data from the documents of the Siberian Tiger Project, together with the data from The Amur Tiger Programme (summarized in my tables) are the most reliable. On the Bengal tiger side, the data from modern literature most change the ridiculous top figure of 258 kg created by the bad conversion of Mazák for the record of Hewett (570 lb = 259 kg in the best approximation). That is why I think that the sizes quoted by Dr Karanth in 2003-2013, despite the fact that they don't came from the sources that he quotes, are more accurate than those of Mazák.

For the other subspecies, Mazák is among our few sources, but in the case of the Javanese and Balinese tigers, I am completely disagree with him, as the few available specimens suggest larger weights than those "estimated" by him, remember that only 1 weight is known for a Javanese male tiger and there is not a single figure available for the Bali population.
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