Can someone explain this..

[tigerluver]

The Amur tiger situation is quite complex. I think Peter noted that captive skulls at least showed the Bengal tiger skulls being the really heavy ones out the subspecies. 

The Amur tiger has faced both a serious bottleneck and significant prey reduction at once in a very short amount of time. The species' is probably at the genetic brink in terms of survivability. It's possible that Amurs still have denser bones just not as much muscle mass. A dense body just does not work well for an energy deficient environment. A greater prey base may allow Amur tigers to fill up more, as if I am not mistaken the modern form have smaller chest girths than Bengals. Furthermore, seeing that 20-30 individuals brought about the current population, a lot of traits were probably lost just due to the small parent population and coincidentally Amurs maintained the canine density and size while losing dense postcranial characteristics. All in all, the Amur tiger's awkward physical composition probably is the result of the subspecies being nearly wiped out and its environment being changed too quickly for the population to find a different way to adapt to with its already narrow, bottlenecked gene pool. Reply