Amur Tigers

[Pckts]

(08-12-2023, 02:42 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(08-11-2023, 07:47 PM)Pckts Wrote: What are the ecological differences between the khabarovsk and Primorye that would contribute to one having smaller or larger cats?

Been honest, I was checking my old data and I could not found any document with concrete evidence if there is a significant difference or not. However, what we can see is that Amur tiger distribution is more abundant in Primorye than in Khabarovsk, based in the map of Mazák (2013) where it shows historic sigths, and if we make a quick view on Heptner & Sludskii (1992) we can see that the Khabarovsk region is the first one where the Amur tigers were extinct and there is no speciall reason why, as the tigers where hunted equaly in the entire area. I found a very old document of 1996 where the recovery of Amur tiger started and the population in Khabarovsk was always the smaller. So, it seems that the population of tigers in that area was not as abundant as in Primorye,

What we can hypotesize, with no hard evidence, is that maybe the prey population in that area was not as good as Primorye, and taking in count that the main population of the Amur tiger was in the Sikhote Alin area and the Manchuria area, it make sense that this regions had the best prey base for the northern tiger.

I have not investigate the newest report of the Amur tiger population, but as far I remember the specimens are focused, again, between Sikhote Alin and Manchuria, trough the Ussuri region.

Finally, estimations of body size based in pictures are not accurate, specially with the Amur tigers and they big fur coat, also old records do not mention any big tiger in that area (Khabarovsk), so any claim that tigers are bigger in that area is irrelevant.

Generally speaking, population density is a good gauge on specimen health barring outside factors like human interference. Reply