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

[BlakeW39]

(11-01-2019, 08:13 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: Body size of the African lion, southern region:

I made a new series of tables about the size and weight of the lions that live in the southern region. Previously, in my old comparative images, I joined the lions from South Africa and Zimbabwe to form the "South-east clade" and those from Botswana and Namibia for the "South-west clade". However, recent genetic studies shows that the diferentiation is still not quite clear, and there is even some overlap betweeen the southern lions and the east ones. In this case, I decided to divide the records in countries:

South Africa: Specimens form the  Kruger NP and the surrounding areas.
Zimbabwe: Specimens from that country and those captured in the Hwange NP.
Botswana: Specimens from that area and those from the Kalahari region.
Namibia: Lions from Etosha, Hobatere and the west coast.

The result is this image with 4 tables, enjoy it:

*This image is copyright of its original author

The results are different because I added new specimens and corrected the locations of others. So if the present figures do not match the ones from the old image, don't get surprised.

Now, this table shows exactly the problem that I explained about the measurements. Those from South Africa are by far the best of all, as all where taken "between pegs" and as we know, some weights are adjusted for stomach content. However the other three populations were measured "along the curves" and in the case of the Hobatere lions, I decided to exclude the specimens that are clearly measured incorrectly. Even then, if we compare the populaton of South Africa and Namibia, we could conclude that the lions from the west are bigger than those from the east, but that is not the case, because the measurements are increased by the method used ("over curves" from ALPRU) and the weights of all the other populations are not adjusted for stomach content, so sadly, a direct comparion is not posible. That is the problem when the figures are not obtained with standarized methods.

Hope this helps to those that like to study the variations of lions, sorry that I did not made a comparative image, but you must know that the important thing is the DATA, an image can be made by anyone, but to compile reliable information, that is the real art. By the way, I did not found any new specimens from the East of Africa, so this data remain the same:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Greetings.

I'm mostly a lurker, but I must say that whenever you post it is a true joy to me haha. Much respect man.

Anyway, it appears like lions of southern Africa have an approximate average body mass of 192kg or approximately 425lbs, in juxtaposition to the cats most usually compared to them, other lion populations as well as tigers: East African lions weigh 400-410lbs on average or 180-185kg? This would mean that Southern African lions are approximately (if we take these as, say, 181kg) 10kg or 22lbs heavier which a difference of 6%, similar to Begal tigers which if I remember correctly you calculated to average approximately 205kg, a 6% difference. The northern populations of lions all seem to be smaller than the above larger cats - 170-175kg, which is >400lbs, potentially as low as 160kg though I believe that low number may be just due to scarcity of prey. I think this gives us a good understanding of where it's all at, yes?

Might you know where these lion populations stand in terms of girth or robusticity/build? I wanted to ask you this on the tiger thread as well but I figured I'd dig through that one to see if there are any, though if you have an average memorized it'd be very much appreciated. Also are the Okavango lions measured? Similarly the Ngorongoro beasts? The Ngorongoro lions seem to be more of an outlier, but the Okavango would raise the Botswanan average, no? Thanks! Reply