The size of the Barbary lion

[GuateGojira]

The body size of the Barbary lion and the west African lion (Panthera leo leo):

Finally, I have finished the comparison images of the size of all the lion subspecies/populations.This is the last one and shows the African remnant of the once greatly expanded Asian lion, which lived in Indian, all middle east, the north of Africa and the entire Atlantic coast of the west of Africa. Check it out:

*This image is copyright of its original author

The body measurements of the West African lions came from scientific sources only, as I don't found any hunting record of the area. The shoulder height is not the standing height, based in images of the measurements. There is no data about the head-body, so I estimate it at 180 and 155 cm for males and females respectively, based in one single male specimen.

For the Barbary lion, like this entire topic show, there are just two reliable figures of sizes (both from Brehm) and although is sure that they came from animals "in the flesh", he don't state if they were captive or wild, although in his book he quotes only wild lions. I add the skull sizes reported by Dr J. H. Mazák in order to provide more data. Finally, I add the weight of 243 kg provided by @Kingtheropod, primary because I found the original source and it seems reliable, at least more reliable that the weight of 255 kg for a male Indian lion of 1620! Take in count that the Barbary lion image represent the largest specimen, not the normal average of the other images. These because I don't have enough data, so I choose to show the possible largest specimen. The longest skull known is one of c.360 mm, according with Mazák (1970; attached document) and quoted by Yamaguchi and Haddane (2002), however based in the average presented by J. H. Mazák (2010), it seems that he found a larger one of at least 410 mm, large indeed but still in the range of the other African populations.

Now, some hard-core fans will hate me for this image, as it proves that the large size of the Barbary lion is just a myth, however I invite them to read the REAL sources (actually read them), the original documents and sources, and you will see that there is not a single evidence or reliable data that these lions were any larger than any other population. In fact, the mane create the effect of "hugeness", but the mane is completely unrelated with the subspecies and is dominated by the climate. For that reasons, all those large captive lions with huge manes are NOT Barbary ones, but just a soup of genes of "American lions" like the also large "American tigers" in private facilities, take in count that these lions came from cold climates (large mane) and been captive are often fat and consequently "large" at the eye.

Why I mention all this, well, because when I was searching a decent image of a maned lion to create the "Barbary" specimen for my image, I had the read all the disgusting posts of some hard-core fans in other forums stating that those large captive maned lions were "Barbary". For that reason, I know that this comparative image will be criticized by this sick people that stick with the old ideas instead of accepting the new data.

In my next post I will show why the only TWO reports of large sized Barbary lions are unreliable and biologically impossible. Reply