Experience with Wild Cats

[Pckts]

(07-03-2014, 01:59 AM)'tigerluver' Wrote: 320 kg is probably where the road ends for modern tigers. 340 kg could appear in Kaziranga for the freakish of freaks seeing as the 389 kg (albeit with a buffalo calf in its stomach) was confirmed. 

Amurs are the most interesting case. The wild specimens are as lanky as lions. Hunting records have shows 320 kg cats. We even have a fit 386 kg specimen alive right now. My theory is that modern Amur are quite inbred seeing that the current population are the successors of only 20-30 individuals. Probability that this remnant population housed the genes of the giant Amurs is slim to none, on top of the fact that inbreeding causes a reduction in size anyhow.

 

The problem is, that even old hunting records of giant amurs still are slightly smaller than bengals.
I still hang on to the idea of Amurs carrying more fat than bengals due to the cold. They also have a thicker coat which also could of given old hunters the impression of a larger cat. That being said, some Amurs in captivity are just plain massive, they are so big and thick that I don't know what to think.
The problem is that photos can be so decisiving, I wonder how many people here have seen huge amurs and bengals and can tell us the differences in body configuaration.
Eagleraptor was probably the only one I could think of, and I know he saw some massive Amurs. Also, old circus performers usually make mention to the massive size difference between bengals and Amurs, but the "bengals" could of and probably were mixed between many different sub species, as well as "bengals" all being lumped together back in those days. They really looked at 3 sub species of Tiger,
Bengal, Sumatran and Siberian. All were lumped in those 3 catagories.

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