Amur and Kaziranga Tigers - Habitat and Prey Analysis

[Pckts]

@peter

A couple of things I found to be inconclusive about your post

"At about similar body length, Amur tigers are more athletic than Assam tigers. Male Assam tigers are built like tanks, but male Amur tigers seldom exceed 210 kg. Assuming male Amur tigers fight dangerous opponents more often than male Assam tigers (other male tigers as well as bears and wild pigs) and apparently have just about what it needed to survive, the conclusion is a fighter in the world of big cats isn't built like a tank."

I definitely do not agree with this, since there is absolutely no way to determine which is more athletic. I have seen a Assam Tigress leap out of 6ft high, dense grass, to the top of a full grown elephant just to attack a FG.
I have seen a massive male tiger chase down cattle through 2+ feet of water and grass like it was nothing while making sharp cuts.
So obviously the massive cats of Kaziranga (assam) are every bit as athletic as Amurs.

The next is this
"WATER

I read nice stories about swamps, big cats and immense muscles in order to move and hunt in a way enabling a decent income.

While it is true Okavango lions and Assam tigers seem extra large, Sunderban tigers are the smallest today. The Vietnamese swamp tigers in Cochin-China a century ago also were smaller than tigers in other parts of Indochina. Sumatra also has very swampy regions, but the tigers making a living over there were not as large as those in other parts of Sumatra.

The conclusion is water apparently isn't a drive for size in lions and tigers. Maybe swimmers are a bit more robust at times, but they are not larger. There are other factors and these seem more important."

You must remember, trying to compare Kaziranga to SUmatra or China is incorrect, since both live in the most densly human populated and deforested areas in the world. They have no true prey to hunt with any real mass and are having less and less room to raom. Especially in Sumatra since I don't know enough about Vietnamese swamp tigers, but I do know that in old hunting images, I saw some massive vietnamese tigers and heard a few stories about their massive size.
But sumatra has been completely destroyed, check out the "hands on thread" where I posted the people of green peace motorcycling all through Sumatra showing you just how bad it is.

So I do think Water is a huge factor, but so is lots of territory, prey densisty and unmolested forrests. But of course water is going to play a huge role, it is the bringer of life. All animals seek it out, and start famililes around it.




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