Lion Directory

[tigerluver]

(08-13-2014, 07:52 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(08-13-2014, 06:08 PM)'tigerluver' Wrote: Body weight and length are directly correlated, but the correlation is extremely weak in lions for some reason. Tigers have a strong correlation of r^2 = >.75, but the lions I have on record around 0.30, abysmal.  

My main guess to why this occurs in lions and not tigers is food intake at the time of weighing. Tigers are normally consistently baited, where lions it looks are found with either a empty enough stomach (I say "enough" as rarely one will find a truly empty belly animal, so it seems most calculate food intake conservatively to keep things even between gorged and regularly full specimens) or gorged off a recent kill, causing inconsistencies. What do you guys think?

 

In fact, I have some doubts about the relation of size (total length or body length?) and weight in tigers.

For example, the largest Amur tiger captured in Sikhote-Alin measured 208 cm in head-body (309 cm in total length) but weighed only 169 kg! However, on the other side, the largest male captured in Nagarahole measured 204 cm in head-body (311 cm in total length) and weighed 227 kg. Even more impressive, the famous Sauraha from Nepal measured only 197 cm in head-body (310 cm in total length) but weighed 261 kg.

Maybe this are just exceptions to the rule, but even then, it shows that like humans, some tigers are long but light and others are short but heavy. Take in count that none of those three males had stomach content.
 

For one, for whatever reason Amurs and Bengals have totally different body proportions. I've no idea why, but even the 306 kg specimen mentioned by Mazak is proportionately light (details in the extinct feline thread). 

I don't have the details on the Nagarhole male. What was his age, by the way? If I remember correctly this is a corrected value? Regardless, there will certainly be examples of awkward variation. The longest male on record was 221 kg or something exceptionally light, while we have a 389 kg, gorged or not, tiger of length 322 cm. These freaks cause that 0.25 R-squared value we're missing. Sauraha fits the average proporton of a tiger. When 30 specimens (chart in the extinct felines thread) from different sources give a correlation of >0.75, can't doubt the correlation between total length and weight. I had to hypothesis test all this for my paper, you'll see it there in a long while (too much on my plate right now).

To be honest I don't know how much baiting occurs, that was just a loose guess. I don't correct body masses in my database. I've taken everything as is, dying and lanky specimens to gorged big guys, it all balances out. Agree with you Pckts. Reply