Modern weights and measurements on wild tigers

[BorneanTiger]

(10-13-2019, 12:32 AM)Ashutosh Wrote: I don’t mean to be rude @BorneanTiger, but, I don’t think a tiger can eat 70 kilos of meat in one sitting!! I know they have large appetites, but that is just ludicrous. For a tiger weighing 315 kilos, 70 kilos accounts for 22.22% of it’s body weight. They have been known to eat about 15% of their body weight but 22% is about 50% off the mark. A more acceptable figure would be that tiger having eaten close to 45-50 kilos (that would still make it a humongous tiger by the way), just not a 389 kilo wild tiger!

Like I said, it can sound ridiculous that a tiger would get so fat and heavy after eating a buffalo calf, but if we go by the example of the 2 Tanzanian lions that reportedly slaughtered 244 cattle and 3 donkeys, or the reports of Barbary lions which got extremely fat by feeding on domestic sheep or goats, then a more logical explanation would be that Hassinger's Bengal tiger had been feeding heavily on domestic bovines (buffaloes or cattle) or other livestock over a period of time. Being confined to places with barriers, domestic livestock would have no way of escaping a predator that enters their territory, so they would be more susceptible to being taken down by predators in large numbers over time, compared to their free-ranging relatives in the wild, which by comparison have plenty of space to escape predators, so it's no wonder that farmers in the developing world, from Latin America to Africa to Asia, are likely to take measures, whether legal or illegal, to prevent predators like jaguars, lions and tigers from taking their livestock, which can include killing them: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46095118 Reply