Amur Tigers

[Apex Titan]

(10-16-2023, 06:46 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: Co-predators and competitors in the Russian Far East:

Returning to the point of this topic, some of you remember when I made a comparative image of the Bengal tiger, its co-predators and competitors and resulted in a success. The image inspired me to make a new one, but this time with the mammal predators of the Russian Far East, using the measurements and pictures from specimens in the area. Here is the result:

*This image is copyright of its original author

As we can see, the tiger is the biggest obligated carnivore in the area and only the brown bear pose a serious competition for resourses. Impresive as it is, tiger is always the biggest mammalian carnivore in any of its habitats.

For those which may believe that the tiger is bigger, actually the bear is, the tiger only looks bigger because of its morphology, however the modern Amur tiger (at least until 2012) is more slender and the tiger in my comparative image reflect more the old giants of the area, with bigger chest and more massive.

I hope you like it, save it for future references. Greetigns to all.

Why wasn't the Himalayan black bear included in this chart? The Himalayan (Ussuri black) bear is classified as a 'large predator' too. It is the 3rd largest predator after the tiger and brown bear.

Brown bears don't pose any "serious competition" to tigers for resources because the vast majority of their diet is plant-based, they rarely or occasionally hunt. Brown bears only serve as commensal animals (mostly scavenging on left-over tiger kills) and a prey item of tigers. 

And the specific subspecies of wolf that's native to the Ussuri region is the Mongolian grey wolf, not the Himalayan/Tibetan wolf. The latter subspecies is not found in the Amur-Ussuri regions of Russia, but is from the Himalayan range, Tibetan Plateau and the mountains of Central Asia. Although the Mongolian grey wolf and Himalayan wolf are genetically the same wolf, they are recognized as a different subspecies.

Map showing the range of the Mongolian wolf (blue) and the Himalayan wolf (pink) in China and surrounding countries:

*This image is copyright of its original author

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