Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[tigerluver]

I'm much too tired for a proper response to match your great post Peter, but out of respect, I'll try to share some thoughts and add on later.

For sure the sample size is not large enough, probably never will be. If I remember correctly, the Bengal database is of almost 30 specimens. Only one Javan specimen has been recorded and that's all I could use as reference. I had more specimens of Sumatran and South China to use for analysis. Like I stated earlier, +/- 5% in density difference isn't too significant to me (I can show hypothesis tests later), and so the Sumatran tiger might not really be the model for our prehistoric forms. The striking differences are in the Bali, Javan, and South China forms because they are 9.8+ %, enough for me to call significant in my opinion. 

For my purposes, the robusticity calculations are more of a correction factor. I am almost certain that some modern male Bengals are as robust as the island tigers. The relatively long specimens of the early 1900s are a bit less bulky than say, Sauraha, density-wise. If I'd get my hands on enough of the large modern specimens probably no density factor would be needed and the uncorrected estimate would still probably range from 470-500 kg. Maybe the predator-prey density ratio plays a strong part in how dense the specimens are. Ironically, less tigers has lead to bigger tigers, and maybe this is due to the predator-prey ratio approaching prehistoric values, just not in the way us conservation savvy folk would have hoped. 


On a separate note, to address the Anyonge equation coincidence with my latest estimate some may be wondering about. It really just comes down to how that equation ended up giving the right values had the specimen been a dense island tiger. The Copenhagen specimens used by Christiansen and Harris 2009 are light. A specimen (230 kg) a bit longer than Sauraha (270+ kg) was at least 40 kg lighter. The Anyonge formula gave an estimate of 290 kg for the specimen. This is where the Anyonge equation overestimation conclusions comes from. So for starters, the 290 kg estimate from Anyonge isn't too bad for Sauraha. Add to that, Sauraha isn't the most dense of specimen eithers judging by the Javan comparison and even his own neck girth (10 cm thinner in circumference than Madla). Taking into account all this, a dense specimen the size of Sauraha could reasonably be 290 kg. Extend that to the 350 cm specimen, and 470 kg isn't out of the question.

It all comes down to database, database, database. Bone dimensions are sometimes messy and weight is too sensitive to them due to small sample sizes. I myself have only been able to measure and add 3-4 more small tiger (the largest specimen was only 125 kg) specimen skeletons to my database. Body dimension reconstruction from a long bone or two seem more reliable to me from what I've gotten. So at this point, I've stuck with the Kurten method of reconstructing the body frame from the bones then applying it to a much larger database of body lengths and the correlating masses. Reply