ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[peter]

(06-26-2018, 12:32 PM)johnny rex Wrote:

(06-26-2018, 04:35 AM)peter Wrote:

(06-25-2018, 02:22 PM)johnny rex Wrote:

(04-20-2018, 07:10 AM)peter Wrote: BETTY

- Thanks again for the info. The article is interesting. I found another some years ago. In that one, the death of the director of a private facility in France was discussed. He too was killed with a neck bite. The tigress was a large (over 200 kg. or 441 pounds) animal he knew well.   

- As to the skull and the scale in the photograph. As we agree on the scale, the conclusion I got to was confirmed: the skull of the 4-year old captive male Amur tiger from the Koln zoo shot in August 2012 has a greatest total length of about 430 mm., a rostrum width of at least 122 mm. and a zygomatic width of about 284,00 mm. It's unique in that it is the largest known skull of a male Amur tiger. By a margin, I should add. The photograph with the scale can be considered as proof. Many thanks on behalf of all interested in big cat skulls!

- Could you enlarge the scans in the previous post? On my screen, they are a bit small. 

- I will contact one of the writers in order to to measure the skull. If it's still there and they offer me the opportunity to measure and photograph the skull, we (WildFact) most definitely will publish a paper.

Are you sure you got the measurements accurate, @peter ? Because when I look at the pictures of Skull 133 which belonged to an old Amur tiger that was shot in a Belgium zoo somewhere in this thread which shows pictures with different angles, I got confusing measurements. That skull is supposed to be 368 mm in its greatest length but when I see the pictures from upper angle and from the side angle, we got different measurements which are erroneous. See below.
 

*This image is copyright of its original author

  

First pic, we got 36 and above centimeters measurement but in the second pic we got different results. In the second pic, it looks like that skull could be a record holder for the largest skull ever for a tiger but actually it isn't because it is the angle that is erroneous. Altai skull is from the above angle, how can we be sure that Altai's skull is indeed above 400 mm?

The measurements of the Belgium zoo tiger are accurate, Johnny. The one who photographed the skull wasn't quite able to overcome the angle problem.

The skull of the very large male Amur tiger from the Koln zoo was photographed by someone familiar with angles. All photographs in the article are excellent. The photographer was a real pro. The photograph showing the size of the skull also has a scale of 125 mm.:

*This image is copyright of its original author

The skull is enormous in nearly all respects. If the tiger would have been mature (he was only four years of age when he was shot), the zygomatic width no doubt would have been very close to 300 mm. 

The tiger was measured by 2 pathologists. In head and body, the tiger was 240 cm. The tail was 96,5 cm. The total length was 336,5 cm. I don't know if the tiger was measured 'over curves' or 'between pegs', but the German zoologists I know told me that big cats are measured in a straight line as a general rule. For this reason, I assume the tiger was measured in that way.

The sheer size of the skull is an additional reason to assume the tiger was a very large animal. Although the relation between body size (total length and weight) and skull size (length and width) isn't very outspoken in tigers, it's there. Not all large tigers have large skulls, but the owner of a large skull almost always is a large male tiger.

There's no question that the male Amur tiger from the Koln zoo was a large individual with a very large head. Apart from the photograph below, I read comments of those who saw the tiger. I also saw a few videos. The tigress, far from small and older than the male tiger, was from France:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Sorry but isn't the second pic of Skull 133 from the Belgium zoo also shown with a 40+ cm ruler as a scale, @peter? The skull is actually only 368 mm/36 cm long as we know but when we look at the skull from top view with the horizontal 40+ cm ruler as a scale, it looks like the skull exceeded 40cm. What is the difference between the top view of Skull 133 and the pic of Altai's skull with 125mm scale?

The photographs of the skull of the Belgium zoo Amur tiger were made by the owner of the skull. He's a biologist, but not a photographer. A pro knows how to deal with angles, whereas an amateur doesn't.

The photograph below from an article recently discussed in this thread was made by a pro as well. It shows the skull of a very old captive male Amur tiger from the Hamamatsu zoo. The article was discussed on this thread not so long ago. When you use the scale on the photograph, you'll see that the difference between the real greatest length of the skull (380 mm.) and the length of the skull according to the scale in the photograph is close to zero:

*This image is copyright of its original author

    

Today, most of us have mobile phones with a camera. The result is a tsunami of photographs and videos. I'm not saying that all photographs are bad, but there's quite a difference between a professional photographer and an amateur. An amateur needs an hour or so to photograph 50 big cat skulls from different angles. A professional needs a day or more. When I was in the Naturalis Natural History Museum in Leiden (Netherlands), a friend photographed all skulls I had measured. He's a professional and needed two days to do it right.

When you publish about skulls and need good photographs, you hire a professional to do it right. Contact any biologist who published about skulls for more information.  

When I visit a museum or someone with a skull collection, the photographs are taken by someone with a mobile phone or a camera. Could be anyone interested. I never hire a professional, because I don't publish. I need photographs to compare skulls of different big cat species from different angles. The board with the scale I used when I started measuring skulls was made by a brother. I thought the scale would help, but the opposite was true in that the photographs often resulted in questions.        

When you still have questions, contact a professional photographer and ask him about the effect of angles and how to remove them. Show him the photographs taken by the biologist in Belgium and the photographs published in the articles discussed in this thread recently. Reply