ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - B - THE LION (Panthera leo)

[lionjaguar]

(10-17-2019, 07:50 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(10-11-2019, 12:46 AM)lionjaguar Wrote: Where is the conclusion?
There are many lion populations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lions already disappeared in many areas too. I think it is very difficult to tell which lion population is the biggest. 
I heard that lions in Ngorongoro Crater, Okavango Delta, unknown areas of the southern African lions are the biggest. It seems to be that many people are still believing barbary lions were the biggest.

Sadly, there is no final conclusion. We work with the few information available and that do not cover the entire area where lions (or tigers) live. Many parts have report of "big" lions, but we must be careful with that as even an expert apreciation may be incorrect. Lions from the Ngorongoro are reputable as the largest in East Africa and based in chest girths this seems correct, but sadly Dr Packer never weighed (or measured, in length terms) any lion in that area, I asked him that but he told me that he only have chest girths and believe me, those are big!

In the Okavango delta there are also reports of big lions from the Joubert, but again we must be carefull because they are talking of the lionesses of the area, the males that lived there do not seems exceptionaly big and can be compared with the males from Kruger NP.

The desert lions are a good surprise, as the body masses in those areas are very big, but the problem is that they contain stomach content, so a fair comparison with other lion population (like those from Kruger, as they are correct for stomach content) is not posible. However, the chest girths suggest that those lions from Kalahari and Etosha are among the biggest on record.

So, like a broad conclusion (for the moment...) we can say that lions in Southern Africa region had higher body masses than those from East Africa but those from the Crater may match they southern brothers.

Finally, about the Barbary lions, there is no real evidence that they were larger than any other population, in fact now that we know that there were in the same subspecies group with the Indian and the west African lions, probably they were of the same body mass or maybe slightly greater. The reports of Gerard that those lions weighed between 270 to 300 kg were just exagerations and can't be confirmed.

I can't understand after lion and jaguar debate. Why are we only using weight to conclude which populations are the largest? Why are we ignoring other measurements? Reply