ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[GuateGojira]

(12-12-2018, 09:17 PM)Shadow Wrote: Bear weights are always problematic if there is only a chart with a few specimens and no details about age range and as you also said earlier, what time of year weighings have been made. It is quite difficult to make too big conclusion with data where is mentioned, that 10 specimens for instance and then mentioned only "adult". There is for instance open question, that does adult mean there a bear at age when starting breeding, which is about 5 years, or does it mean a bear, which can be counted as full grown, which means about 9-10 years old. When combining that to big changes in weight from spring to autumn, these details should be involved to these charts so, that readers could figure out, that do those numbers have value if comparing for instance bear sizes in 1970´s and bear sizes today. With many other animals weight is much more stabile during a year if able to get food regularly.

That is the reason why I think, that in those charts is maybe too little information to make big conclusions.

You have a good point. Variation of the weight in bears is incredible. They can gain and loose about 30% of its body mass trough the seasons, so it is very important to know in what season where they weighed. Also the age is important too, as you say, there is a diference between "adult based in reproduction" and "adult based in body madurity". The same happen with tiger for example, so people states that a 3 years old tiger is already an "adult" just because they can breed, but actually they are still in development and can grow more.

Sadly, these tables are the only information that we have and I think that we must respect and use it, as they are the results of hard work and time from scientists that try to present information usefull to all of us. 

Interesting to see  with a "simple view" (no deep analysis) that the male bears weigh more now and female weigh less. I am interested in see what conclutions can we draw from this, but I think that if the moderators are agree, they can COPY (not cut please) those two posts in the topic about Amur bears and continue the discusion there as this is a topic of tigers. Reply