Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos

[BorneanTiger]

(09-03-2019, 06:11 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: Body size of Indian lion - modern records:

For many years we tried to get good information about the size of the Indian lion (Panthera leo persica), the last population of the Asiatic/Barbary lions, and that now share the status of subspecies togheter with the West African lions as Panthera leo leo.

For several years we had only the information from Nowell & Jackson (1996) which provided the ranges of the weights of 6 adult lions captured by Dr Ravi Chellam in his studies of 1994, there were 4 males that ranged between 160 to 190 kg and 2 females that weighed 110 and 120 kg respectivelly. They quote that the longest lion measured 292 cm according with Sinha (1987).

After that, I manage to collect all the available sizes of Indian lions from several sources, all of them measured between pegs, and I created this table and these images:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

However, we still lacked the weights of 2 of the four males from Dr Chellam, which by the way, were baited and includes some stomach content. However, the weights matched those of the lions captured in West Africa.

Latter, an email arise in this forum, about weights of Indian lions:

*This image is copyright of its original author

I guessed that those weights were real and I decided to update my table, but for lack of time is still in my list. 

However, surfing the web I found this document thatn changed all: "Asiatic Lion: Ecology, Economics, and Politics of Conservation" - Yadvendradev V. Jhala et al. (2019).
Link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....y-material

This document not only have one of the most compreensive summary of information about the Indian lion in modern and old history, but also is the FIRST document, as far I know, that actually have the body measurements and weights from adult Indian lions!!! So, here is the information:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

I think that this is more than enough to see that Indian lions are long but not as heavy as some people calculate based in pictures. Measurements were taken "along the curves", but I suspect that they pressed the tape like with the Amur tigers, as a lion with a head-body length of 204 cm (M6) weighs only 160 kg. Compare these measurements with those taken "between pegs" in my table.

Interesting as it is, this documents provides much more information about this animal, and I think that many people here will be happy to discuss it and to learn more about this incredible animal, a relic from a past that no longer exist.


Greetings to all!

One thing that these lions definitely have in common with Northern tigers (Caspian and Siberian tigers put together genetically) is that they suffered a massive reduction in number and habitat (which they partly shared), so just as the Amur tiger is what remains of the Northern race of tigers to have its weight reliably measured, the Gujarati lion is what remains of the Asiatic population of lions to have its weight reliably measured. As for the extinct lions and tigers of Iran and elsewhere, what we have left are photos, pictures, skins or stuffed bodies kept in museums, like that of Shirea, an Iranian lioness brought to Dublin by King Edward VII in 1902, during the reign of Shah Mozaffar Ad-Din of the Qajari dynasty of Persia, and kept in the Natural History Museum of Ireland:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Men with a changed lion in Iran, circa 1880, by Antoin Sevruguin:

*This image is copyright of its original author

2 heads of tigers (I assume Bengal tigers) placed next to a stuffed lion (mistakenly called a 'tiger') in Bahawalpur Zoo in Pakistan, and it appears that the lion and tiger did occur in the area of Bahawalpur in the past, see the works of Kinnear (1920) and Nowell and Jackson (1996, referencing Roberts (1977)): 
   
   
   

Also, @Rishi earlier posted photos of stuffed lions in a museum in Jerusalem, from Dr Norman-Khalaf and Haaretz. Reply