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

[GuateGojira]

(12-22-2018, 11:03 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: The Caspian tiger was no joke: 

A) Iran: 

Early 1940's: http://www.tigers.ca/Foundation%20overview/caspian2.htm 

*This image is copyright of its original author

1912, this website also has other information, including on the Singaporean tiger: http://forums.nitroexpress.com/showthrea...age=3&vc=1 

*This image is copyright of its original author

B) Caucasus: 

Heptner and Sludskiy quoted Konstanin Satunin as saying that there was a huge Trans-Caucasian tiger with long fur and appearing "no smaller than a common Tuzemna horse", from Prishibinsk (present-day Göytəpə in Azerbaijan), Pages 141–144: 

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

C) Central Asia: 

Karakalpakstan, currently an autonomous republic in Uzbekistan: http://around-karakalpakstan.blogspot.com/2013/11/ 

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These Caspian tigers look good enough to be rivals for this Amur tiger from the Primorye region: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/books...ine-t.html

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It would moreover be helpful if we could have measurements for museum specimen, unless Vratislav Mazák (https://web.archive.org/web/201203091255...1-0001.pdf) took care of that already? 

Medical College in Baku, Azerbaijan: http://www.tigers.ca/Foundation%20overview/caspian2.htm

*This image is copyright of its original author

Persian tiger in the Georgian National Museum: http://kavehfarrokh.com/heritage/the-las...n-georgia/, http://museum.ge/index.php?lang_id=ENG&s...nfo_id=847 

*This image is copyright of its original author

Also, check this out (https://wwf.ru/upload/iblock/d6d/atacoll...ll_eng.pdf), it gives surprising dates as to when people saw Caspian tigers in different parts of their range, long after the date of extinction given by this report (https://www.felineconservation.org/uploa...ersion.pdf), which nevertheless provides an interesting insight as to what people did for the Caspian tiger before 1970.

About the Caspian tiger size:

According with Mazák (1981), the Amur-Bengal-Caspian tigers are the biggest cats in modern times and rank about the biggest felids in history (modern and prehistoric). Now, regarding the Caspian tigers, the information is very poor and only a few measurements and weights are reliable. In the list of measurements presented by Heptner & Sludskii (1992), most of the measurements were taken "over the curves" and other were from "skins", the last ones are completelly unreliable. However, some of the measurements were taken "between pegs" and its sizes are no different from those from India and Russia, althought the largest specimens are not as large as its cousins from the other populations. Now, the big problem with the Caspian tigers is that the sample of "reliable" measurements and weights is very small, from my investigation I could found only 3 males and 5 females reliable measured "bewteen pegs" and only 6 weights (3 males and 3 females) that we can quote correctly. Mazák also found very few skulls, only 7 males and 10 females. With such a small sample is very dificult to get a true idea of the maximum size for this tiger population.

I will quote again one of my comparative images. The next one is about the largest tiger subspecies/populations, but take in count that need to be updated as the subspecies are no longer three but only one for the three populations (Panthera tigris tigris - mainland tiger subspecies) and the sample of Bengal tigers is bigger. Also, in the skull sections, we must exclude the Bengal tiger skull of 413 mm as is no longer reliable and also the skull of 385 mm from the Caspian population, as Mazák (1983-2013) did investigate the skull and found that it was destroyed, also that the measurements do not match so is probably also unreliable. Now, in the section of the measurements of the Caspian tiger, the information is exactly the same and I dare to say, it is the most accurate collection that you will found in the web or book until now:

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The sample of skulls came directly from Mazák (1983-2013), and probably exhaust all the skull available from this subspecies/population. Here is the original:

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So, altough the Caspian tigers seems to be smaller than the Bengal and Amur population, this is not exactly correct, as the sample is very small and probably we will never know the biggest males from this population. These pictures are particularly special:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

This male probably was as large as the largest Bengal tiger of Brander or the largest Amur tiger reported by Mazák (the record of Jankovsky), even if the guy in the picture is not particularly tall. However, we can also guess if this specimen is already stuffed, in that case it will not represent its real size, just like these picture:

*This image is copyright of its original author

We can see that this is just a skin, it do not represent the real size of the specimen.


In conclution, Caspian tigers were big, based in the skull it was slightly bigger than the Indochina tigers and smaller than Bengal/Amur ones, but with such a small samples, there is the posibility that the largest specimens probably reached the same size, but this last is just my especulation. Reply