Modern weights and measurements on wild tigers

[GuateGojira]

(11-09-2018, 10:21 AM)Kingtheropod Wrote: GuateGojira regarding food intake. What is your opinion of the Sunquist figures of food intake. The figures showing food consumption of 14-18.6 kg in a 24 hour period does not necessarily mean they consumed all that in one sitting, meaning that cats could have consumed only 7 kg in one feeding session, and consumed another 7 kg later on in the same day after it digested the previous meal. In other words, the 14 kg daily food intake figure could have consisted of several smaller meals meaning the figures for Sunquist being adjusted to 221 kg (minus 14 kg) could be completely void! In addition, what do you think the correct figure for Sunquist study should be, should we use the 221 kg adjusted figure, or the 235 kg?

I got the idea reading from Nat Geo

"It may take days for a tiger to finish eating its kill. Tigers have been known to eat up to 60 pounds (27 kilograms) of meat in one night, but more often they consume about 12 pounds (5 kilograms) during a meal. The cat eats until it's full, and then covers the carcass with leaves and dirt. When it's hungry again, the tiger comes back to feed some more, until the meat is gone."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/an...facts.aspx

The same also applies for the example above.

@Kingtheropod, I am very surprised that you are asking me that question again, specially when you already know my answer. Did you remember that harsh debate with Waveriders about the food intake? Did you remember when I explained the method to bait a tiger in Nepal and why the figure of 14 kg is accurate and may be a little excesive to adjust?

Let me tell you again. I explained that baits are put between 6-7 pm and latter they are checked again at about 4 am of the next day (in some cases they were checked trought the night at Tiger Tops, as Dr McDougal took turist to see tigers eating baits in the night). This means that the baits are left in the field about 9-10 hours. Of course, there is no case showing a tiger killing a bait inmediatelly after the scientist leave it in the field. So assuming that the tiger manage to kill the bait at about 8 pm, this means that the tiger (male or female) had about 8 hours to eat. Now, tigers do not eat the prey inmediatelly after killing it, it grab its prey and move it to another place and latter it start to remouve all the hair before to start eating. Schaller says that after 1 1/2 -2 1/2 hours eating they stop and rest, maybe they can move to drink something and then return to the kill latter. This means that the tigers (male and female) do not eat constantly with out interruptions during the 8 hours, in fact, they probably eat about 6-7 hours in displaced periods, maybe less, and the other time they rest, drink, play or fight scavengers from the food, that is a normal sesion of feeding for a tiger.

Sunquist (1981) found that a tiger (male and female) may eat between 14-19 kg in 24 hours, from baits and also natural kills. However these figures are from undisturbed kills and were measured from several days. Figures of 30-35 kg for male and female tigers do exist, but these are exceptions, not the rule in any case. The tigers at baits only had about 7 hours to feed, maybe 8 in the best case, and Dr Sunquist himself describe that in all the captures they disturbed the tigers at the kills, and in an email he especifically said that he "don't ever remember been struck by the size of the stomach of any of the animals, suggesting that they had not yet eat their fill when captured".

So, tigers did not had 24 hours, nor even 12 hours to eat at baits, which means that the figures of 14-19 kg may be actually higher than the real food intake of the tigers in the captures at "disturbed kills". If a tiger eat an average of 19 kg in a day, this means that in 7-8 hours it may eat about 5.5-6.3 kg, which is close to the 6-7 kg that Sunquist (1981) estimated was the necesary daily intake for a female tiger, obviously will be more for a male. Even if we take the figure of 27 kg reported by Dr Schaller from only one male that he was able to measure, it means a food intake of 8-9 kg in the 7-8 hours when the tiger was able to eat undisturbed. Finally if we take the exceptional food intake of 35 kg reported by Dr McDougal, we can estimate a food intake of 10-12 kg for a large male, but this was an exceptional case and represent the maximum food intake, actually measured, reported in litterature. So we can see that about 8 kg for females and 10 kg for males will be a good food intake, assuming that the tiger did eat the 7-8 hours at the kill "undisturbed" (but the "real" feeding time could be much less). Also remember that tigers were captured in the morning and the search for the tigers started at about 5 am and it seems that tigers were found resting, not eating, at the baits, they were not gorged and the food intake was probably less than 11 kg in both males and females in the time that they were at the kills.

Please take in count that we are assuming that tigers killed the baits just a few hours after they were put in the field, which probably was not the case. So the figure of 14 kg to adjust the weight of the Nepalese tigers is actually slightly higher than the estimated "real" amount of food consumed by the tiger in the baits "undisturbed", and the figure of 19 kg will be excesive. I can say that the average figures of 221 kg for males and 130 kg for females "adjusted" seems reliable, but could be actually a little higher, maybe up to 227 kg for males. Reply