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

[tigerluver]

Interesting observation on the Sumatran skulls, Peter. I know you're sample size is quite large, so the trend is probably significant. In my head, rather than having two forms, there's probably some type of positive allometry (body sizes grows much faster than skull size) going on in the relation of skull size to body size in Sumatran tigers, accounting for why skulls differences between genders aren't great but size differences are, at least based on the accepted data, still significantly different. Either that, or the Sumatran form was/is losing sexual dimorphism, but I doubt this theory based on the size data available.  Reply