Who is the "king" of tigers? - Bengal or Amur

[GuateGojira]

(06-26-2021, 06:51 AM)peter Wrote: Discussions about the size of wild tigers is serious business. Not a few of those interested have an agenda. Meaning they doubt everything not to their liking. Biologists also are involved in debates about the size of big cats. Goodrich said wild Amur tigers are 'overrated' and Kitchener and Yamaguchi had serious doubts about the weight of the Sauraha tiger. They think he was baited when he was weighed. This means they doubt information published by their peers. Like I said, it's serious business. 

There are two points that I will like to take in count:

1 - Dr Goodrich on Amur tigers: There is no doubt the the US-Russian scientists that worked with the Siberian Tiger Project made an excelent work. The measurements and weights that they recorded showed that the reputation of the Amur tiger as the biggest of the cats was not correct in modern days. However, they also accepted that some old records were also reliable and shows that at some point the Amur tigers were as big as the current Bengal tigers. In fact, my studies shows that both cats are of the size, with skulls of c.380 mm in GL and weights of around 250 - 270 kg. So I think that Dr Goodrich is correct if we use only the records from the STP, but since then, the Amur Tiger Programme directed only by Russian scientists has found heavier tigers in other regions from the Amur river, showing that this population is probably incresing in size and at some point maybe they will reach they old size and I think that this will happen probably in the Manchurian region or in the Russian border with China as in this area is where the old records of giant tigers were the most, not in the Sikhote Alin region.

2 - About the Sauraha tiger: Dr Kitchener and Dr Yamaguchi worked in a chapter of the book "Tigers of the World" from 2010 and there they say that they found that the figure of 261 kg for the heaviest Nepalese tiger is not reliable as the tiger was baited and could weight as low as 215 kg! Sadly, this shows that they have no idea of what the scientists from the Smithsonian/Nepalese tiger project was doing in Chitwan NP.

* First, it is not only ONE tiger that reached that figure but TWO, the males M-105 and M-126, both captured by the scientists team between 1973 until 1980.

* Second, the claim that all tigers were baited or even gorged is incorrect. The document of Dr Dave Smith and colleges from 1983 clearly says that while baits were used to lure the tigers, many of them were captured some times without baits and only using the radiocollar signal and those specimens were obviously those that had more time under the study, and male M-105 nicknamed the "Sauraha male" is a perfect candidate as it was captured at least 4 times as we know.

* Third, they assume that the tiger was gorged with at least 46 kg! This is nonesence. Again, Dr Tamang in his document of 1982 clearly says that the maximum amount ate by a tiger, that they actually recorded, was of 34 kg, and Dr Sunquist in his paper of 1981 says that the average amount consumed by a tiger in 24 hours is between 14 - 19 kg. In this case, it is possible that Dr Yamaguchi based his claim in the fact that Dr Schaller estimated that the maximum amount that a tiger can eat in 24 hours is about 1/5 of its weight, which Dr Sunquist estimated was about 45 kg for a large male (his large male was about 225 kg in his calculation). However the truth is that Dr Schaller recorded only ONE meal for a male tiger and was of 27 kg in a day, and Dr Sunquist says that he don't remember any tiger that was gorged in the moment of the weighing, which definitelly discard the figure of 34 kg for any of the tigers captured. We must remember that the tigers, when captured, they were disturbed from they kills and they probably did not eat in full, so the idea that the large M-105 had 45 kg in his stomach is something out of question.

* Forth, the tiger (or tigers as there were two) did NOT weighed 261 kg but they bottomed the scale of 600 pounds used by the team! This fact was confirmed by Dr Dave Smith and Dr Eric Dinerstein, which mention that both males weighed over 270 kg. In this case, IF the idea of Dr Yamaguchi was real, these males could weight as low as 227 kg, not the 215 kg that he proposed. But as we know that these males were obviously not gorged (and probably not even baited in the case of M-105), we can use the figures reported by Dr Sunquist (between 14 - 19 kg) to estimate its empty belly weight and using the figure of 272 kg as the real weight, the "empty" figure will be about 256 kg, but as the scale was bottomed, this shows that there was extra weight and they could have actually weighed no less than 260 kg "empty". Interestingly, the figure of 261 kg came from an chest girth-weight equation and the figure that I estimate is about the same, so the figure of 261 kg do not represent a single heavilly-gorged specimen as Kitchener & Yamaguchi (2010) suggest, but the weight of two big males empty belly.

This shows how important is to know the background of a situation before to make assumptions, but sadly they statements are published already and most of the people will ignore the facts that I described above because they are not in a book, but scatered in several documents. Reply