Zoos, Circuses, Safaris: A Gallery of Captivity

[Amnon242]

(09-06-2016, 07:11 AM)Blackleopard Wrote: Yeah I agree, the tigers are more muscular in the arms, they have to be, to many pics show that, plus you can see them in real life in some places, I was in Florida, saw some big ones.  But I'm not willing to make a determining factor on which cat is actually stronger, the male lions like you're saying can look very husky.  There was this lion, it was a white lion, it was like 900 lbs in Florida, not neutered, but again it would have to be verified not 100% sure about the validity of that claim.  Another lion down in Florida, really cool place to go, very popular for tourist, BigCat Sarasota, huge lion there, a monster, supposedly almost 800 lbs, verified.  Another young white lion I saw on vacation was over 600 lbs verified by the trainers, probably going to get bigger, which was about the same weight as some of the largest tigers there.  So it hard to say, I was wondering what are the biggest captive tiger weights, the ones that are factual not exaggerated.

Its hard to know whether the more muscular arms of the tiger, would put it over the edge in strength alone, vs say yet a thicker huskier body on a lion, you'd think a thicker a denser framed person is often stronger than a more narrow guy yet with muscular defined arms from curling.  But again its hard to know.  They could end up being equal overall, apparently that trainer Randy Miller thinks so.  But I'm not sure, you also see some pretty thin tigers out there, but yet they're faster.  And that could be because their bodies are thinner, the lion is carrying around perhaps more weight on its frame for its size.

The Siberians are big though, Ive seen them, their all over the place now, so many places have bred them.  I don't think pure bred bengals are as big as Siberians, or the mixed Siberians that are bred in captivity for so long.  Huge heads, huge paws, and consistently the biggest looking cats, but again, its hard to say how much they really weigh vs a large lion of equal size.

Vratislav Mazak, one of the biggest big cat experts ever, wrote in his book Velke kocky a gepardi (Big Cats and Cheetahs) that tiger is extremely strong felid and that power of his legs does not have analogy among felids. One former employee of Zoo Prague told me that tigers are incredibly strong, ho told me how amur tiger bent strong iron bars and all the staff were in shock because they thought that something like that would be impossible.

Im sceptical when I read about 800 or 900 lbs felids. 200 kg (or 440 lbs) felid is huge. 250 kg (550 lbs) felid is very huge. 300 kg (650 lbs) is extremely large felid and this is the limit for non obese felids. According to my experience the weight data from zoos are quite reliable, while private breeders have tendency to overestimate the size of their felids... Reply