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

[GuateGojira]

(01-30-2022, 09:42 PM)acutidens150 Wrote: I have seen a lot of calculations of Bengal tiger average weights from 199-214 kg, what is the final average weight of male Bengal tigers by all records.

Before to answer your question, let me give you a little insight about why we are calculating averages.

The thing was this, at the year 2003, when I joined to the discussions about "tiger vs lion", there was not an study which had all the weights available, actually posters in the old AVA (Animal vs Animal) forum from YUKU did not used to much primary sources, Brander was used in a second hand source, Cooch Behar was ignored because Schaller said it was biased and Hewett was known only trough Mazák (al this is allready corrected, now we have the original sources and we know that Cooch Behar did provided records of his small specimens and are not biased). So in that moment, I started to compile all the available information about weights and after several years (yes, years, this was not made in one day), I compailed the first tables about the weights of Bengal tigers and also from the Amur tiger (thanks to the document of 2005 from Slagth et al. and Kerley et al.). After that, what I have done is just to enlarge the tables and try to depurate it from specimens that at any light are not adults, but the work has been ward and dificult, specially by the constant attacks of the tiger haters that will complain for anything, so I just decided to ignore them and follow the process in base of scientific documents as much as I can.

Now, the last criticism was the method itself, which for many years was just to put the populations together and make a simple average, like most of the scientific paper do, for example Slaght et al. (2005) and also Kitchener and Yamaguchi (2010). Some posters said that they averages should be "weighted" so the last figures from lions and tigers that I posted use this method, which do not signifantly affect the results, and at the end, it provides a reliable form to take in count the size of the sample in the creation of the averages.

Under this background and events, I can tell you that the calculated averages fluctuated in base of the sample size and the specimens used, the source (hunting or only scientific) and the method applied. So that is why you may see several averages from many people that started to calculate they own figures. From my part, I can guaratee that I tried to use only the corroborated information and excluded "record" specimens to avoid bias.

Now, the points of Pckts and LandSeaLion are very valid, there is not a fix "average" figure that you can constantly quote, there are many variations that affect it, for example the particular variation of the specimens and the fact that while we can use the specimens available, there are going to be always "bigger" specimens and "smaller" specimens than what the ranges of our studies may show. There are other factors that we don't know from the huting records, like age and health status, and that is very important. This doesn't mean that the averages are unreliable, or that we should stop doing it. For the contrary, is important to continue working on them the check the variations and get a better idea about the size of a population. Check for example that in this form it was known the huge variation on size that the Amur tigers suffered, from been the largest cat to be now in the second place by a significant margin.

So, at the end, you will not found a fix average and you should be carefull to which source you quote, as there is several people out there that try to create they own figures but they had a hidden agenda and they will ignore or include random weights with no justification, and sadly all this is not for scientic accuracy, but there are several fanatics in the internet that continue sperading lies just because they want to prove that they favorite animal is the best, this sick people (like BoldChamp, Catlion, StarFox, among others) are very dangerous people, not only decievers, but also people that hate an animal (the tiger) with no reason, and from my point of view they are as dangerous as a poacher in the jungle. Other thing is that we should use not only averages but also other type of measurements. For example with Bengal tigers we have two modes (190 and 227 kg) and in the frequency table we found that while the average is about 200 kg, the largest frequency is between 220-230 kg, which means that most of the males weight in that range.

Now, about your specific question, I am with Pckts on this, the current data suggest that including all the reliable records from hunting and scientific sources, the average male weight about 201 kg and the average female about 131 kg. This sample probably include young animals or sick animals that we can't remouve (like in Brander, or small figures with no specific details) but we take it as part of the population. However this may change if we have more records in the future.

I hope this answer your question and if there is any other doubt feel free to ask. Reply