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

[GuateGojira]

Body size of the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), modern records:

Well, this is something that I wanted to do several years ago, but the few time available and also the lack of data stoped me many times. However, now I manage to get both in my hands and I finally made the tables about the body size of the Bengal tiger using only modern records. This is also something that many people requested to me, so now is ready. I attach the PDF document here and I also share the images of the tables, here we go:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

So, the tables include an explanation about the details, and also you can see that I separated the weights and measurements in reliability levels, but also added a table with only the 100% confirmed figures that you expect will be quoted by scientists, as that is information that is review by peers. The list exhaust the measurements available but not the weights, as some of them were not included because are still not confirmed by me. So, this is an extra table NOT included in my document, where I do include all the weights that I could get, if there are missing figures you are free to add them:

*This image is copyright of its original author

As we can see, the diference is very few, the 100% reliable average 212 kg for males, those that are via other sources but still confirmed and reliable average 213 kg and the overall sample is of 215 kg. So basically independently of the sample the average of the male Bengal tigers seems to be over 210 kg in modern records, using males over 3 years old. The Bhutan tigers are not published in any document but the figures were confirmed by me via Messenger, so I included them, and we can see that they are of the same body mass than the Thailand tigers, however the sample is still small and for the moment I don't know if there are more specimens (males and females) captured. The male of 166 kg I still have my doubts, as is too small for an adult male and the next one is of 180 kg, so maybe it was not in good shape (it was a little over 3 years), the table do not clarify that and even the body measurements do not match, so I made corrections that  make sense.

I also noted that the interest is focused in males, as there is no weight of females that I could add in an extra tables. Do we have some bias about the sex here? It seems so.

Appart from all this  I am happy that finally we have a good collection of figures of modern measurements and weights and we reached a moment when we no longer need to use the old hunting records as the main source. Of course I am not suggesting to discard them (like Dr Karanth or Dr Yamaguchi suggest, as they do not trust in them), but we can use it like a secondary reference and take the modern ones as the main source of data.


I hope you like it, you can share it and use it. As always, any question, feel free to ask.

Greetings and cheers. Reply

Attached Files

  Bengal Tiger Size_Raúl Valvert (2023).pdf (Size: 1 MB / Downloads: 11)