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Lions of Sabi Sands
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@Potato it was discussed and posted here once screenshots of books showing the growth rate of lions. Although they reach their peak height at 4, they gain a lot of weight from 4 to 5, and a bit more after that, the average male IIRC gained some 5kg after 5yo, so a big male would proportionally gain even more.
Idk how old Skorro was 1 year ago, but maybe not even 5. By "we" I mean the fans, most never considered Gijimas to be particularly big. The dominant males in Londolozi are small so it's not a surprise for them to be impressed by other males like Gijimas even if Gijimas aren't very large. But it shows how seeing lions at separate occasions and in separate years can be misleading. I don't think Gijimas are that much bigger than the Southern females and those lionesses don't strike me as particularly big either. The difference between NK and Gijimas is that we have better evidence with NK than guides' opinions. We have photos and videos of NK with several other males, Styx, Nhenha, Kambulas, Talamatis, Tumbela, and video of him chased by PCM. And seen videos and photos of him interacting with several different lionesses. Othawa Breakaway, Ximhungwe, 2 old Othawas, Mangheni, Talamatis... Out of all of these he either looked bigger or around the same size. The exception being the PCM who looked much more impressive, though they weren't even side by side and PCM had much bigger mane. My opinion of the Gijimas is that they are probably slightly bigger than prime Tumbela who I think is average. Tumbela isn't small, he looked decently taller than Ximhungwe and old Othawas, all 3 that were/are large lionesses. Nsuku yes, probably below average. There's a video of S. Avocas with DeLaporte, sure not the best of the comparisons but Avocas looked much more impressive. The guide who was seeing them around that time said he thought Delaporte was average but after seeing him recently thought he was big, but Avocas who he had also seen recently, a bit bigger. NK looked even taller than Nhenha, but Nhenha had a much bigger mane. Prime Nhenha could have been bulkier, but the difference between them if any was very small overall. And again, I didn't say Nhenha was the biggest, I said he was considered ( by many ) to be. I for example thought OM was more impressive than Nhenha, even if not by much. |
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