Captive Lion and Tiger weights

[GuateGojira]

(01-06-2020, 09:33 PM)Shadow Wrote: I think too, that 270 is possible. But after I started to check many old claims I´ve got the feeling that in many cases they come from maybe one source and no double checking. That tends to leave room for errors in many cases. I guess, that a few years ago discussions were often so heated up, that when something "good" was found, people didn´t even want to check too much or didn´t quite know how or dare to do that. 

I can admit, that I don´t give too much value to many old postings in different places. It´s obvious that a few years ago heated debates between people who liked tigers and lions caused also a lot of misinformation spreading, many times proof has been vague or poorly checked. That´s why I nowadays always track down lions and tigers, which are claimed to be exceptionally big, for me that is from 250 kg and upwards. 




What comes to private owners, I mostly ignore them. They all seem to have 700-900 lbs tigers and lions (and always if true, obese) :) Same time from real zoos finding even 600 lbs big cat which someone would really confirm feels very difficult. I have been asking about Yeltsin now from the zoos it lived, he died last spring. I´ve seen article mentioning, that he was 270 kg. Interesting part is, that at that time he was transferred from Swiss zoo to Germany and he was 2,5 years old.

It will be very interesting if/when getting replies, that was that 270 kg maybe a typo or what. If true, he should have been later 300 kg. But I haven´t seen that weight so far mentioned anywhere else than one article, so it could have been a typo too. On the other hand he was looking a big and fit tiger in photos. Very interesting tiger, I think.

You are right, in the old days of the AVA forum, there was constant wars and the missinformation was part of the day. Very few posters provided reliable data and even that was missused by both sides of the debaters, you can still see this is forums like Carnivora or other new forums powered by Tapatalk, that are ruled by posters like Catlion/Boldchamp/Starfox which are among the worst and most biased posters that I have ever saw. At the end, it was until the creation of Wildfact forum that factual information could be shared and the results have been amazing!

Amomg the few posters that I could know, that no longer participate in forums (as far I know) are "Ppardus" and "Eagleraptor", this last one did presented his true identity as Craig Kennion and he worked with captive Amur tigers. However, after 2009 (as far I remember), he no longer participated in the AVA forum (probably for all the constant crap) and we lost contact. Now it seems that all the data from him was lost in the zoo and that is really sad, as he was a good poster and provided good information about captive Amur and Bengal tigers. From his statements, he said that from 38 captive Amur tigers that he saw 16 were males and only 3 were about 600 lb and only one almoust 700 lb, most of the males weighed between 450 - 550 lbs. He mentioned that two of the three heaviest males weighed 602 and 611 lb (273 and 277 kg) respectivelly and the lightest one was "Gamin". 

I do not normally like to use captive specimens weights as, like you say, many are estimations and some of them unreliable. Just a few weights are reliable and I have saw many new weights in this topic, but I no longer made a follow up of those figures, maybe I will do it latter. Reply