ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - B - THE LION (Panthera leo)

[BorneanTiger]

(10-03-2019, 09:16 AM)lionjaguar Wrote: I can't understand after reading this. What is the biggest lion? The Cape lion and Barbary lion were not the biggest lions? Why so many information in internet and book are still saying those 2 lions were the biggest lions?

By reliable measurements, the biggest lion is the Southern subspecies (Panthera leo melanochaita) present in Eastern and Southern Africa, with lions in Southern Africa (e.g. South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia) having higher average weights than their relatives in Eastern Africa (see the work of Smuts et al.), and members of the Northern subspecies (Panthera leo leo) in Asia and northern parts of Africa at least looking smaller than the former subspecies.

As for the Barbary and Cape lions, which are now treated as populations within the Northern and Southern subspecies respectively, rather than as subspecies of their own, a reason why people considered them to have been bigger than other lions is similar to why people may think that Siberian tigers are bigger than Bengal tigers in the wild (when in fact it's in captivity that Amur tigers tend to be the biggest tigers, with Bengal tigers outweighing Siberian tigers on average in the wilderness, see the work of Slaght et al.), that is thick hair, the fur in the case of the tiger, and the mane in the case of the lion. Just as an Amur tiger has a thick winter fur which may make it look bigger than a Bengal tiger, the manes of the Barbary and Cape lions were so thick or extensive that they may have made them look bigger than other lions. Otherwise, considering how large contemporary Southern lions can get, it is plausible that the Cape lion was at least one of the biggest lions, see more details in these threads: https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-the-siz...8#pid59978, https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-lions-i...2#pid89772

Heptner and Sludskiy on the lions: https://archive.org/stream/mammalsofsov2...4/mode/2up 

*This image is copyright of its original author

Siberian tiger with its thick fur during winter: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...-wild.html

*This image is copyright of its original author

Amur tiger with less thick fur, outside winter: https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/amur-tiger

*This image is copyright of its original author

The Siberian tigers above aren't necessarily bigger than this huge Bengal tiger at Kaziranga National Park, northeast India, but the first tiger may look big because of its thick winter fur: http://tigerworld-parvez.blogspot.com/20...engal.html

*This image is copyright of its original author

As someone remarked in this forum for hunters (after someone suggested that this was the biggest African lion), it looks like a "black-maned" Cape lion: 
   

Just as the Amur tigers above aren't necessarily bigger than that Bengal tiger, the lion above doesn't have to be bigger than this Southwest African lion in Etosha National Park, Namibia, but it may look bigger than this lion because of its thick, belly-covering mane: http://www.africaphotography.co.za/etosha-august-2014/
   

These so-called "Barbary lions" look bigger than other lions because of their manes and muscular physiques: 
           

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