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

[Kingtheropod]

(11-01-2019, 08:13 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: Body size of the African lion, southern region:

I made a new series of tables about the size and weight of the lions that live in the southern region. Previously, in my old comparative images, I joined the lions from South Africa and Zimbabwe to form the "South-east clade" and those from Botswana and Namibia for the "South-west clade". However, recent genetic studies shows that the diferentiation is still not quite clear, and there is even some overlap betweeen the southern lions and the east ones. In this case, I decided to divide the records in countries:

South Africa: Specimens form the  Kruger NP and the surrounding areas.
Zimbabwe: Specimens from that country and those captured in the Hwange NP.
Botswana: Specimens from that area and those from the Kalahari region.
Namibia: Lions from Etosha, Hobatere and the west coast.

The result is this image with 4 tables, enjoy it:

*This image is copyright of its original author

The results are different because I added new specimens and corrected the locations of others. So if the present figures do not match the ones from the old image, don't get surprised.

Now, this table shows exactly the problem that I explained about the measurements. Those from South Africa are by far the best of all, as all where taken "between pegs" and as we know, some weights are adjusted for stomach content. However the other three populations were measured "along the curves" and in the case of the Hobatere lions, I decided to exclude the specimens that are clearly measured incorrectly. Even then, if we compare the populaton of South Africa and Namibia, we could conclude that the lions from the west are bigger than those from the east, but that is not the case, because the measurements are increased by the method used ("over curves" from ALPRU) and the weights of all the other populations are not adjusted for stomach content, so sadly, a direct comparion is not posible. That is the problem when the figures are not obtained with standarized methods.

Hope this helps to those that like to study the variations of lions, sorry that I did not made a comparative image, but you must know that the important thing is the DATA, an image can be made by anyone, but to compile reliable information, that is the real art. By the way, I did not found any new specimens from the East of Africa, so this data remain the same:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Greetings.

@GuateGojira 

Great work Guategoijra!!!!



All these weights are basically what has been stated in other sources. For South African lions, the average is about 190 kg, or about 10-20 kg more then that of East Africa.

The weights for Namibia and Botswana however are certainly outliners here. The weights for South Africa and Zimbabwe are literally identical, but the other two locations have a noticeable difference. The smaller size of lions in Botswana I would imagine are likely due to environment (swamp lands), but for Namibia I can't say for sure. Reply