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08-20-2014, 09:44 AM( This post was last modified: 08-20-2014, 09:46 AM by GuateGojira )
I have observed and interesting fact from all these images: there is no such thing as an average coat pattern in Bengal tigers!!!
From all those images, some of these specimens looks like Amur tigers, others looks like Indochinese and there is even one that looks like a Sumatran one! This is the reason why Dr Kitchener pointed out the fact that the modern subspecies classification, based in the morphology of a few specimens, is "invalid" and should not be used anymore. The variation of coat pattern in Bengal tigers is huge, just like its size: the largest Bengals are as large as the largest Amur tigers (320 kg) and the smallest Bengals are as small as the smallest Bali tigers (75 kg)!
Now, about this paragraph: Credit to P. Tigris
"In 1910, Jim Corbett shot a tiger in North India, this one weighed 317 kg (700 lbs).
In the 1930s, Jim Corbett shot the Bachelor of Powalgarh tiger, thought to be "as big as a Shetland pony" by the famous hunter Fred Anderson. This big guy measured 3.23m, as opposed to 3.35m of the 389 kg giant killed in 1967. His book: "Man-eaters of Kumaon". Picture of this tiger shows that its build is on a par with the 1967 giant. This Kumaon district is in northwest India, bordering Nepal to the east. It is where the famous Corbett national park resides.
In 1942, a large tiger killed in Chitwan, Nepal mentioned by E. A. Smythies in his book "Big game shooting in Nepal": 320 kg, or 705 lbs.
1955: Colonel Kesri Singh observed a tiger killing a big tusker all by itself also in Assam, Northeast India. This deed is recorded in his book “The tiger of Rajasthan” as: "Death by a Thousand cuts". He also stated that all that’s left behind, apart from the huge elephant carcass, are this tiger’s pugmarks which are as big as a dinner plate. This confirmed the shear weight and size of this massive tiger is on a par, or equal with the giant 389 kg tiger killed in North India in 1967. "
There is a myth in the web that Jim Corbett weighed a tiger of 317 kg, but this is false. Corbett did not weighed any of his tigers, and apparently he only measured two of all his hunts. The tiger that weighed 317 kg was hunted by Captain M D Goring-Jones in Central Provinces (Wood, 1977). There is another enormously fat hermaphrodite specimen hunted in the Nilgiri Hills and reported by Fraser (1942), bus this specimen was not weighed and only estimated at 317 kg (Wood, 1977). So, there are two different 700 pound tigers, one actually weighed, the other just estimated and none of them was hunted-weighed by Jim Corbett.
To be sincere, I think that the Bachelor of Powalgarh looks larger than the Guinness tiger of 389 kg, but this could be only my perception. Even then, the fact that the Bachelor was a HUGE specimen most be taken more seriously, after all, even when this male probably measured "only" about 310 cm in total length between pegs, we don't know how much of this is for the tail, so this giant could be as large as the record tiger from Brander (221 cm in head-body), as far we know, and the pictures support my claim.