Amur Tigers

[Shadow]

While discussing about captive Amur tiger Igor from Odense zoo in "extinction thread", once again one thing crossed my mind. And that is weight changes/fat layer changes what comes to Amur tigers during summer and winter. That is one thing, which isn´t in discussions too often and still it can be in reality quite big factor what comes to weight changes. When talking about weights, often stomach content is mentioned even though it can be actually quite marginal issue unless animal is gorged so, that stomach is like full balloon. I mean if some tiger or lion is 220 or 230 kg, that is quite small difference. But what if a tiger up north can be in early spring like 180 kg and later autumn 220 kg...? How much there really is information about tigers?

When I looked briefly what is said about mammals up north, one feature was common. All gain more fat before winter as nutrition reserve and against cold by gaining fat layer under skin. I didn´t yet see numbers what comes to predators, only mentioned that they all do that. For instance what comes to raindeer, I found one source saying, that in October they can have 19% of body weight fat, then again in April 1%. About Svalbard reindeer was mentioned, that in autumn they can have even 40% of body weight fat and still in spring 10-20%.

Those figures just to give some idea about it, that this fat layer change during year can be pretty significant factor also for tiger. And most probably is, it´s quite difficult to imagine how else it could survive winters when temperature can be time to time even -30 degrees Celcius and -15 to -20 is nothing special.

For me this is not a question about it, that are there changes, question is how much? Reply