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

[GuateGojira]

The “forgotten” record:
 
As incredible as could be, the record tiger of 320 kg was, in some time, the more reliable on record, but it was “mysteriously” forgotten in the shadows. The blame of this great mistake is no other than Vratislav Mazák. However, how could this been?
 
Well, the problem is that Mazák was “in love” of the Amur tigers and his descriptions are evidence of that. When he claimed that the Amur tigers were the largest of the subspecies, he based his statements in a very poor skull data-base of wild AND captive Amur tigers and he don’t even take the time to measure or investigate the equally (or even larger) great skulls housed in museums of India and Nepal. In the body size and weight, he based his statements in captive specimens too, and the result if the famous table of 1981, that now is used as the “official” data of the size of the tigers.
 
Other great mistake on Mazák was this statement: “No “shooting sport” sources, including R. War’s Records of Big Game, were included”. This was simply ridiculous as his sources for the record Bengal and Amur tigers were, in fact, hunters’ books too, like John Hewett, Jankovskii and Jim Corbett. Why he accepted the record of 306 kg for a “captive” Amur tiger and dismissed the record of 320 kg for a wild tiger, is beyond my logic, especially when the source was as reliable as his other sources for tiger records. After 10 years of studying tigers, I can conclude that the only “reliable” part of Mazák’s table (immortalized in the famous book of Nowell & Jackson (1996)) are the skulls and even them are partial as include captive specimens and ignore the great skulls from Bengal tigers in Indian museums.
 
This abstract from the Zoologist Grzimek is important:

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Sadly, as far I know, he don’t presented any measurements, but his conclusions are suggestive, as show that the tigers from the Assam region seems larger than those of the Russian Far East, in the skull department at least.
 
However, not all scientists were influenced by Mazák and his biased idea that Amur tigers were the only giants. There is a list of great scientists and biologist that DO accept the record of 320 kg from Nepal, check this out:

1. Trilok Chandra Majupuria - 1981:

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2. Guy Mountfort - 1973:
 

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3. Gerard Wood - 1977:

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4. George Schaller - 1967:

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5. Arjan Singh and John Moorehead - 1999:

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6. Tom Brakefield - 1993:

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7. Arjan Singh - 1984:

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8. Paul Holzmaver:

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9. Charles McDougal - 1977:

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So, if this league of extraordinary gentlemen accepted this record, who are we to simply discredit it, based in the opinion of a single man? Definitely, I am with Schaller, Singh, McDougal and others.
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