Are Tigers 'Brainier' Than Lions?

[GuateGojira]

Just a side not, on the skull size:

I was reading a preview of the new book "Wild Cats of the World" of Dr Luke Hunter, in the first edition of 2015. I was interested in tigers, obviously, but although the section about ecology, biology and other points, presents an excellent summary, the section of size is terrible, quoting head-body lengths of up to 300 cm for tigers, 250 cm for lions and 270 cm for jaguars, this obviously constitutes total length measurements, but the book don't differentiate them. Sadly, that his is an official document.

Well, I want to focus in the skull lengths that he quotes, which is between 25.3 - 37.9 cm for tigers and 26.7 - 42 cm for lions. I ask, where are the records of Mazák on the tigers??? Why he ignore it??? The answer, he used the document of Yamaguchi et al. (2009) about the cranial volume of the tigers and lions, (attached in my previous post). There you can see the graphic and the skulls that they measured, sadly ONLY in Europe and North America, as usual and ignore the large skulls in Indian and Nepalese museums (the skull of 38.7 cm from Calcutta, measured by Sterndale (1884), and the skull of 38.1 cm measured by Dr McDougal (1977) in Nepal, remain unpublished in modern documents).

The problem with these "new" records is that we don't know if that tiger of 37.9 cm and if that lion of 42 cm are wild or captive specimens, as Yamaguchi and his team mixed all the data (check the document). Again, I think that although the effort is good, new books from modern scientists put less and less attention to the body measurements and the general morphology.

If someone can get the page 190 and 196 during the preview, I will be very grateful, as these are the only page that I can't unveil in the preview. Reply