Modern weights and measurements on wild tigers

[GuateGojira]

(09-02-2020, 02:26 AM)Balam Wrote: @GuateGojira the weights of 74 and 73 are important to register in order to get as much information as possible gathered. To reach a middle ground, however, I will add an asterisk to explain separately in the table that those two may be males in dire or not optimal conditions. Although keep on mind that A2 was quoted as being a healthy individual in the article where the weight was published. I'd be curious to see the weight for the 185 kg male, we may be able to add it as an outlier as well.

The inclution of all the specimens possible is not a good way to get a good and accurate average. It is important to get the status of the specimen. In this case, while both specimens are reported as "healthy", none of them state if this was before or after its capture, or before or after its release, and based in the fact that one of the males was heavier after its time in captivity is easy to conclude that the "healty" status was in the moment of its release, not immediatelly during  its capture.

Other thing is that as I told you before, none of the previuos records, from wild or captive specimens, report such a low figures, so it is obvious that these are outliners in bad shape (Pathio also confirmed that the males captured are normally not in good shape, the same as the giant of 185 kg reported by Sody (1949) and van Balen (1922) which is an exceptional specimen. The thing with the averages is not to grab as much as possible specimens and pull a magic soup, but the gatter the specimens, check its relability and how they will afect the specimens overall. This technique is used by many Biologist in order to avoid issues with the figures, but sadly is also ignored by others.

In the tiger and lion cases, we normally use the maximum food intake as the mark to check outsiders, which in both cases is c.35 kg, but as Sumatran tigers are smaller, the mark should be less, like c.20 kg or the 14% of its body size (Schaller estimated up to 25%, but that is probably to much for a normal feed). Even then, this two specimens are still low to that mark (74 against 95) and more imporant, the tiger of 95 kg is a young adult. The same case with the giant of 185 kg, is to much different from the maximum comprobated of 148 kg, so is also excluded.

My advise is to avoid to add just figures to the pool. Other thing is that we need to check these figures from the news reports, as many times the figures are not real or as just estimations, believe me we had many issues with this and we are not new in this "business". Weights from news reports or from facebook need to be double checked, as may not be accourate, reliable or even real. If you check the paper of Slaght et al. (2005) you will see a good explanation about this.

As I said, this is my advise and you can leave it or take it, but from what we see and the observations of posters like Pathio, I can tell you that 118 kg is a good average for a healty over 3 years old male Sumatran tigers, for Balinese tigers it was probably less and for Javanese tigers it was probably more. Reply