B2 and Other Great Tiger Pics from India

[Vijay Rajan]

(05-18-2016, 10:21 PM)Pckts Wrote:

(05-18-2016, 09:05 AM)Vijay Rajan Wrote:

(05-17-2016, 09:07 PM)ST2 from Sariska, she is a monster female, probably one of the largest ever weighed. 170kg at 3years old is the top tier of Tigress weight in my opinion. Wrote:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Hi Pckts,Thanks for sharing the info on Sariska.

No offence but I'd remain skeptical about the accuracy of the recorded weights of ST-2 (T-18) as well as ST-4 (T-12), both of whom I'd sighted & photographed quite a few times in Ranthambhore, prior to their translocation. Take a look at these 2 pics of [b]ST-4 (T-12), photographed a year after his arrival in Sariska to ascertain where my apprehensions stem from. Does he really look like a 170 Kg male is what baffles me. I'll try digging up my archives of 2007/08 for T-18's pics in the meantime.[/b]

It's hard for me to tell off of images, but obviously you know better than me.
My question would be this?
If he is said to weigh the same as T18, how do they compare to each other? Does she seem to be as large as him? Also, how does she strike you as a tigress? Does she seem to be larger than most?
She seems very large to me, but like I said, images are so hard to gauge accurately.

Pckts,

Of course she'd always been an average sized Female & was nowhere near to the size of ST-4 (T-12).

Of all the RTR females I've documented till date, I'd rate the Kachida Tigress (T-5) as one of the largest, closely followed by the late Meera (T-37) & Machali (T-16) in her prime. T-18 as well as her siblings T-17 & T-19 were of similar size (120-130 Kgs during 2008 is my educated guess). 

It's interesting that they've also got the ages of a few of the captured / translocated Tigers wrong. I reckon Machali produced her 4th litter of 3 Female cubs in Mid-2006. Hence T-18 (ST-2) was around 28-30 odd months old sub-adult when translocated. Likewise T-12 (ST-4) was born in a litter of 2 male cubs to the Guda Female in Mid-2003 (I've photographed him as a 4 month old cub & shall retrieve those old slides to be shared here) & hence was a 7 yr old Male in his prime at the time of translocation to Sariska (My educated guess is 220 Kgs easily at the time of capture).

I'm attaching images of ST-2 (T-18), the 1st one photographed in Sariska during Nov 2010 (2 yrs after translocation) & the 2nd one is from April 2011 (2.5 yrs after translocation). I'm sure you might agree that 170 Kgs does seem way off the mark for her in 2008, when she was just a 28-30 odd month old Female. Even if she'd indeed been 170 Kgs, she had to be bigger/taller/longer than Bittu or Srinivas of Umred, which I'm afraid she certainly wasn't !

Taking the above into consideration & also the fact that conventional & totally unreliable weighing scales (now obsolete) were used during those days, I wouldn't be surprised to know they did mess it all up while recording weights. While I'm no expert & neither do I know it all, I can't help but cast aspersions of their data. I hope the countless hours spent in the field to track, sight, photograph & document various litters of RTR does assert my line of thinking on the Sariska capture/release data. Reply

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