Freak Specimens

[GrizzlyClaws]

(06-11-2014, 09:18 PM)'GuateGojira' Wrote: Logic, not heart:
This topic is full of great animals, most of them real giants among the cats. However, I don't want to be a dream-killer here, but we most accept that most of the weights presented here, of both lions and tigers, are plain guesses, and for comparison, useless.

The heaviest lion ever was of 375 kg (826 lb), and was a captive specimen; the heaviest tiger ever was of 423 kg (932 lb), and was a captive one too. These animals were actually weighed, not just estimated. However, when we take a look to all those weights of 700, 800 and 900 lb, all are just estimations based in the size of the animals. Besides, despite what we believe, weighing an animals of that size is very difficult, and not all the parks have the possibility to do so. I remember the case of the tiger Shere Khan (Amur-Bengal mix), which was estimated to weight up to 800 lb, but at the end, he weighed about 700 lb (he bottomed the scale, but the keepers estimated that he probably was some 20 pounds more).

So, I recommend to use logic and accuracy here. If we don't have a direct confirmation of a weight, or at least a published figure in a scientific paper, then we most take that weights like a grain of salt, independently if they came from a lion, a tiger or a 500 lb jaguar!

A personal point here, when I began my investigation about captive Amur tigers, I found that the heaviest male, actually weighed and from reliable sources, was the giant of 306 kg vouched by Mazák. The second one was a male of 277 kg and the third of 273 kg. I found a record of a male of 320 kg, pure blood specimen from the Johannesburg Zoo, but sadly, I has been not able to confirm the figure with them.

KingTheropod found higher figures latter, but this show that if we use only reliable and officially recorded weights, records of 800 and 900 lb seems to be simple nonexistent.
 

 

Jaipur once has topped 1025 pounds, but then they put him on a diet to lose weight down to 932 pounds.
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