Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project

[GuateGojira]

I see where this is going. The debate "lion vs tiger" is useless and have no importance. Why you are insisting on it @Blackleopard?

It is an historic fact that there is not a single real account of a lion fighting a tigers in India, no one. Nor even the oldest Indian books mention this (Thapar, 2004). Besides, it is also an accepted fact that lions and tigers can't share the same habitat: lions prefer the open habitat and its group living way of life is adapted to use it; tigers evolved for close forest habitat and its way of life is perfect for this. This is the clever way that nature have to avoid conflicts, with two large predators that exploit two different habitats. If in any moment a tiger or a lion ever fight each other, this was simply never witnessed by any human. Other fact, Indian male lions live solitary lives, or with a male mate in some cases, which reflect an adaptation for the Indian habitat. Yes, lions can adapt themselves to forest and tigers to dryer habitats, but this is not the norm in India, when the changes in climate are very marked.

It is interesting to see that the only possible interaction between a lion and a tiger was in Burma (to far away from the eastern region of the Indian lion), with the legend of a great cat with mane like a lion and stripes like a tiger. Some cryptozoologists believe that this is evidence of the existence of ligers in the wild, but I guess that like many legends, this originated for a real liger born in captivity and latter, the peoples myths made the rest. Check that even this possible interaction in the wild was not even aggressive, but like I mentioned before, this was probably just a myth.

With respect of the arrival of the lions and tigers to India, the same book that @Blackleopard show here (Sudipta Mitra, 2005, Gir Forest and the Saga of the Asiatic Lion) mentions that lions arrived first, so the book contradict itself, in the same chapter. However, the real facts show that the tiger arrived to India just about 12,000 years ago (Yamaguchi & Kitchener, 2010), while the Asian lion invaded all Asia at about 21,000 years ago (Barnett et al., 2014). So, is obvious that the lion was the first arrival to India and take in count that about 20,000 years ago, India was a dry savanna like area, perfect for lions but unsuitable for tigers (Kitchener & Dugmore, 1999).

Finally, on the size issue, there is no evidence that the Cape lions were any larger than the nominal South African lions at the Kruger region (Guggisberg, 1975). Also, a deep look to all the available records of sizes from the Indian lions show that they were in fact, smaller than the African lions, and similar to those of the West African region, which constitute the African branch of this subspecies. The only two weights available in the old literature are somewhat doubtful: the male of 255 kg was taken in 1620 so there is no way to verified it, the other male of 222 kg seems more reliable but this is a figure that is normal for large African male lions.

Now, let's focus in the theme of the topic, which is the reintroduction of lions in Kuno, and the problems or advantages that this would create. No more "lion vs tiger" crap. Reply