Who is the "king" of tigers? - Bengal or Amur

[GuateGojira]

(11-06-2015, 05:17 PM)peter Wrote: An interesting question is why Amur tigers have oversized skulls and canines when it is known that Indian tigers (and lions) face and hunt larger animals. Today's Amurs face a lot of competition from hunters, but two centuries ago they didn't hunt very large ungulates as well. The reason is Manchuria and southeast Russia never had them. Not in the last thousands of years, that is. But bears and wild boars were and still are plentiful.

My hypothesis about this phenomenon, posted many times here, is that the large size of the skull and canines of the Amur tiger is an adaptation for the predation on wild boars and even bison.

Let's remember that Amur tigers are no other thing that the western population of the Caspian tigers, which invaded the Caspian region about 10,000 years ago. This tigers specialized in the hunt of wild boars, which in those areas were very large and robust, probably even more dangerous than a large bovids. In this area also exited the European bison and tigers probably hunt them. Under this circumstances, Caspian tigers needed to adapt to this new large prey with stronger skulls and larger sagital crests. This new adaptation was also kept by the "new" Amur population that also hunted large wild boars and that now had the competition of large bears.

If we compare these situations, the tigers in the south east of Asia (India included) did not hunt on "giant" boars (except in some cases in Nepal) and do not have large sized competitors. So, in a wide point of view, this could explain why Amur tigers are so robust and although now they weight as much as African lions, in the past, the large Amur tigers reached the same body weight than Bengal ones and certainly they measure the same in body size. Reply