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

[GuateGojira]

(08-10-2023, 12:32 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: 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

*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

*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.

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

For those that believe that I am going to ignore/delite/disparage the old hunting records, that is NOT the case. We can't ignore that huge source of information that for good or bad, was obteined via reliable sources, altough by barbary methods. Here is the list of the body mass of all the hunting records that I could found during all this time:

*This image is copyright of its original author

I am currently not searching new hunting records, and I think that I reached a point where the average is not going to change unless we include a significan new amount of weights. So, I think that, for the moment, this will be the conclutions about the weight based in hunting records. So, it seems that the old Bengal tigers had an average of 201 kg (442 lb) for males and 131 kg (288 lb) for females. Remember that this list include everything, young/old/sick specimens that hunters identified just as "adults" in they bags. A more inclusive list? Impossible.

Now we can compare the old Bengals with the old Amur tigers and we can see that they were lighter, although we need to take in count that the sample size of the Bengals is huge in comparison with those from the Amur tigers, not too fair I think.

About the body size, I remember that I already shared my full list, and when I remouved the modern records the averages do not changed:

Males: Total length 282 cm - Head body 191 cm - Chest girth - 132 cm - Height 100 cm.
Females: Total length 255 cm - Head body 168 cm - Chest girth - 105 cm - Height 87 cm.

Ok team, until next time, wish you the best and if you have questions, you can make here or send me a PM. 

Greetings and cheers. Reply