Freak Specimens

[GuateGojira]

(11-28-2019, 11:17 PM)Shadow Wrote: I have had some interest to find out information about animals which would be even beyond exceptional. With Simba only place coming to my mind with possible good information could be staff of Guinness World Records. But it might be the same as usual, they have in past published a lot of information with inaccuracies/open questions what comes to animals, especially wild animals. But because Simba was captive, who knows... I actually forgot to ask from there, that do they have information about possible weighing.

Then again, as you said, it was clearly obese lion and quite big. When we have obese people over 500 kg, it makes perfectly sense that any lion or tiger can be fed to be very heavy in captivity. That was probably one reason why I forgot to ask from Guinness, fit and big animals are way more interesting. I think, that captive animals show at least roughly where fitness starts to change to obesity.

In fact, I don't think that there was any Guinness staff involved with this lion. The book is creation of Gerald Wood and his own investigation, even when the book is part of the Guinness family of books. He was a good investigator and he personally contacted many of the sources, especially the contemporary ones in captivity. He provides many details of this lion, which incline me to belive that the data is accurate. The same happen with the tiger "Jaipur" and the liger "Hercules", which were actually measured and weighed, and also the Li-tigon "Cubanacan" which was measured but not weighed, just estimated. In the case of the last three animals, staff of the Guinness were actually involved, as far I know.

As far I know, the category of the "heaviest" animals in captivity is no longer accepted because they took note that the animals that applied to those records were very fat and sometimes even morbid obvese as the people feed them for that especific objective. Reply