The size of the Barbary lion

[LonePredator]

(04-05-2014, 11:58 PM)GuateGojira Wrote: Here is the link of my original post: http://animalbattle.yuku.com/topic/55/The-size-of-the-Barbary-lion#.U0BS8VcXK8w

I have more genetic data from many other documents, I will share it with you here.

For the moment, is 100% sure that Barbary lions, Indian lions and at some degree the West African lions, are genetically indistinguishable. Besides, they morphology seems to be equal. Check that both Barbary and West African lions have the same belly fold and they skulls also have the divided foramina aperture in they skulls.

If Indian lions have other differences, this are only because they are highly inbreed, and based on they genetic, they are like twins and have ZERO genetic variation (O'Brien et al., 2003).

Were the other populations of Lions which lived in India (except Gir) the same subspecies as West and North African Lions or were they a different subspecies than Gir Lions??

Since the Mughals imported Lions from North Africa, they were obviously P. Leo Leo (North and West African and Gir subspecies) and those are the Lions still living in Gir.

But were the other Lions from the rest of India also the same subspecies as the Gir Lions or did they belong to the East and South African Lion subspecies? Or was it a completely different subspecies altogether? 

And I agree about the Gir Lions, those Lions have recovered from a very small population, I remember reading somewhere that at one point, their population was as low as 20-30 specimens and at that point, inbreeding was pretty much inevitable. They’re definitely heavily inbred.

And most likely because of this reason, the Indian Lions seem to have somewhat deformed faces. For example, the Lion below seems to have a weird and deformed face, I don’t think Asiatic Lions are supposed to look like this and it’s probably the result of inbreeding. What do you think??

*This image is copyright of its original author

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