The size of the Barbary lion

[Matias]

(05-25-2022, 11:28 AM)LonePredator Wrote: And most likely because of this reason, the Indian Lions seem to have somewhat deformed faces. For example, the Lion below seems to have a weird and deformed face, I don’t think Asiatic Lions are supposed to look like this and it’s probably the result of inbreeding. What do you think??

*This image is copyright of its original author

By photography, despite the grooves on its forehead, it is not possible to identify with some fidelity the existence of craniometric anomalies in this Asian lion. If it is a wild specimen there will hardly be considerable anomalies, if it is captive probably the result will have some support.

Given the natural physiognomic differences between Asian and African lions, notably the little manes between Asian wild males in the central area of the head, it leads you to believe that there is some anomaly in this specimen. Male of captive Asian lions living in cold environments such as Eastern Europe, they are from Juba Grande and uniform, making it difficult to quickly identify that it is an Asian lion. If you look for images of lions in Tsavo, you will see some similarities with Asian specimens.

“The patterns of geographical and phylogenetic lions variation based on an extensive morphometric analysis in 255 wild lions skulls indicate that lions skulls vary considerably along their geographical area and that variation is greater within populations than between They, being found a significant subdivision only between sub -Saharan Africa and North Africa/Asia ”. Ji H Mazák.

Visually Asian lions are different from Africans. These differences are not supported by craniometric morphology, especially especially in issues involving diverse environmental associations. Remember that: Any skull of a human born in Europe and another born in China has no difference. The image of each is very different, the work of the complex structuring between muscles, tendons, vessels - driven by genetic determination and geographical determinism. Some like to mention phenotypic plasticity and biogeographic modeling, but we will not enter this foolish scientism - just recognize that geographical extremes and long millennia in isolation will multiply differences. Fortunately or unfortunately, Asian and African lions do not have dozens of millennia in isolation, so their differences are noticeable in visual morphology, and nothing that is fully evidenced in fossil analysis that identifies significant differences in the skull. The most that can be said is that the population of Asian lions shows differences in "shape" in relation to the populations of Africa, driven at high speed by the recent population bottleneck of this population in the last 150 years. Given this, it is almost impossible to determine how evolution is acting on the criteria of expertise in this Asian part. Reply