Maximum size of prey that a single male lion or tiger can kill

[GuateGojira]

(04-01-2020, 09:38 PM)Pckts Wrote: From Kailash Sankhala

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

And the points is?  Shankala do not say that tigers do not kill bull gaurs, he just say that tiger will try to kill the calves, which is logic and was confirmed by Dr Karanth too. The case of the buffalo and the tiger, as far I know it was a tigress and even if she died at the end, she manage to kill the big bull too, which is also incredible.

Interestingly Shankala in page No. 97 mention a case of a bull gaur killed by 3 tigers, a tigress and her two adolecent cubs, still a big feat as the effect of the two tiger cubs was probably minimum and was the tigress the one that also probably give the final letal blow, we are speaking of an animal that weight an average of about 130 kg killing a bull that probably weighed 700-800 kg, a relation of 1:6!

Shankala did not go deeper in that point, so his observations in the book at least, are limited and of second hand.

Now, let's check Schaller and he describes in pages 290-291 this incident: "One tigress at Kanha apparently jumped on the back of an adult bull gaur from a stream bank, bit him in the back of the neck, bearing him to the ground, and then grasped his throat, a reconstruction based on te tracks at the side and the tooth maks of the dead animal". This is a more reliable record as was investigated by Dr Schaller himself and again a tigress (average 130 kg) killed a bull gaur that can weight between 600-1000 kg. He also mentioned a case of a gaur cow that died from injures of an unsuccesfull hunt performed by a tiger (no sex stated).

So previous to the study of Dr Schaller and Dr Karanth (in the time of Perry and Sankhala and even before them, for example), very few information existed about the predation of tigers and bull gaurs and although mayority of opinions were in those early days that a tiger was not a match for a bull gaur, except if the great cat hamstrung the big bovid, there were reports of tigers killing big gaurs (posted by @peter). After the study of Schaller and Karanth, scientist discovered that tigers predate on gaurs, that they are biased toward young specimens but that a good percentage included bulls that weighed about 1,000 kg (Karanth & Sunquist, 1995; Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002; Karanth, 2013). Reply