Modern weights and measurements on wild tigers

[paul cooper]

John Seidensticker & Charles McDougal:

"In mainland environments where primary prey are larger ungulates, tigers are larger,    

as much as twice the size of the Sunda Island tigers. Large body size may increase the efficiency of preying on big ungulates, but decreases the efficiency of living on smaller prey types. The smaller body size of the Sunda Island tigers may increase the efficiency of capturing the smaller prey that are relatively abundant in rainforest environments, feeding primarily on plant reproductive parts, but does not preclude the capture of large prey, such as Bos (800 kg).

Understanding tiger resource acquisition is important to tiger conservation. The integrity of tiger ecotypes should be recognized in the management of captive and wild tigers as a metapopulation or metapopulations. The loss of larger prey types from habitat fragments can be expected to severely affect the survival of tigers in those habitats; larger tigers should be more severely affected than smaller tigers because of their different success-of-capture curves."

https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...er1993.pdf


 


   

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