|
Why captive Bengals are smaller than Wild Bengals?
|
 (11-10-2019, 04:47 AM)Roflcopters Wrote: It’s a combination of things, environment and surrounding are two of the biggest factors. for example, if those specimens were from the wild. a lot of us would have mistaken them for females or young sub-adults. they’re definitely nowhere near their wild cousins. in the wild, a tiger generally can do a lot better in the summer seasons and even then we see a few tigers that don’t retain their overall body-mass that they would normally have in the spring, fall or winter. Sangam from Kanha for example was skin and bones in the summer, the same male in any other season was considerably a lot bulkier. in the wild, they have the luxury to go and explore. plenty of water bodies for them to go around. in captivity, options are very limited and summer in India is generally very brutal. which puts them at a significant disadvantage, also remember tigers position themselves according to their environment. another example, T24 aka Ustaad of Ranthambore. when he was in the wild, he weighed 240kg on a 250kg capacity scale. same male in captivity was just a little over 200kg, 215kg to be exact. my friend who recently saw him thought he would be lucky if he weighed over 200kg now. I know in Indian zoos they're fed 10 kg of meat everyday and are starved one day of the week, usually thursdays. Is that low?.. Most tigers I have seen in Indian Zoos(& I've seen many, every city I've been in) are often quite large but always skinny. Because every one of them is fed the same amount, the smaller ones get fat. Our zoos don't yet have the standard practice to provide them enrichment or exercise. So it could be the deliberately and underfeed him to avoid obesity. |
| Users browsing this thread: |
| 1 Guest(s) |