Size comparisons

[Pckts]

(04-19-2022, 01:00 AM)Twico5 Wrote:

(04-18-2022, 09:44 PM)Pckts Wrote:

(04-17-2022, 03:03 AM)Twico5 Wrote:

(04-17-2022, 01:18 AM)Pckts Wrote:

(04-16-2022, 10:30 PM)Twico5 Wrote:

(04-16-2022, 09:45 PM)LoveAnimals Wrote:

(04-16-2022, 06:27 PM)Twico5 Wrote: huge cattle herds

An Oncafari biologist states that most of jaguars they study at Caiman Ecological Refuge (where the largest jaguars in the world are found, like Joker and Robusto), very rarely prey on cattle. 

*This image is copyright of its original author

(04-16-2022, 06:27 PM)Twico5 Wrote: Pumas in Patagonia are eating cape hare

About this, read here :
https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-cougar-...#pid141952 while European hares definitely make a bulk fo cougar diets in the Patagonia, they are usually hunted by youngsters and females, not adult males.

 As you can see from that post adult males hunt primarily guanacos, rheas, and wild horses.

It is very rare for pumas to hunt wild horses. They are dangerous prey and guanacos/hares are a much more frequent prey item. Also, horse-killing pumas get huge. They’re the ones that get upwards of 100kg

“In 44 of those 147 sites we recorded hunting events. In 40 of these sites we found remains of guanacos and rheas, while in the remaining 4 we found remains of wild horses.“ 
Over the course of 2 years btw. 4 horses (most likely foals), over the course of 2 years, sample size = 1 male puma.

Jaguars in the pantanal also hunt horses btw. Certainly not comparable prey bases still.

Nowhere are pumas upwards of 100kg. You Are talking about an outlier when mentioning 100kg Puma.

I never said avg weight? As i said before pantanal jaguars have a better prey base than any cougar population. Every individual is large and well fed. However, a 90kg puma is not exceptional, there are usually 80-90kg pumas mentioned in every single study ive seen from argentinea and chile as well as nw states like idaho, montana, utah etc that includes weights. A 90kg puma is large yes but in areas where they have little competition and healthy prey bases why should there be any avg or 60 kilogram males?

Never did I say average either, you said "upwards of 100kg." Which is extremely rare for any Cougar. 
90kg is also extremely rare for any Cougar, any cougar between 80-90kg will be in the upper tier. 

*This image is copyright of its original author

You'll notice that only one there even reached 80kgs. 

Also, Pumas in Patagonia have just as large of of a prey base as Pantanal Jaguars. 

Quote:Yes and horse-killing pumas usually tend to be larger. I was talking about Patagonian pumas specifically when I said their predation on wild horses was rare. 

This is also an unfounded claim. Wild horses would be even more difficult than Guanaco, generally speaking the only Cats that could prey on adults would be large ones regardless. 

Quote:Amazonian Jaguars vary in size. Most are large and here is their prey base:

The largest verified amazonian Jaguar was around 70kgs.

Quote:Now of course they don’t have 10 million caiman to prey on and nor do they have huge cattle herds grazing in their territories but they do have tons of reptilian prey. These are animals cougars don’t typically hunt.

Again, they must become sloth hunters for months out of the year and the terrain doesn't allow them to hunt that prey. 

Quote:“Sloths”. Throughout most of the Amazon they’re preying on large reptiles

What exactly are these "large reptiles" you think they are preying on?
And there is no debate, sloths make up a high majority of Amazon Jaguars diet. Sloths also make up a large portion of the Jaguars diet in Costa Rica as well.
Prey abundance drives habitat occupancy by jaguars in Amazonian
floodplain river islands
Rafael M. Rabeloa,b,∗
, Susan Aragónc
, Júlio César Bicca-Marquesd
"Jaguars’ predominant terrestriality does not preclude them from
occurring in Amazonian seasonally flooded forests (herein várzea forests). This is the case at the Mamirauá Sustainable Development
Reserve – a protected area of várzea forests in Central Amazon – where
jaguars reach high densities probably because of high prey abundance
(Ramalho, 2012). The availability of arboreal (e.g., sloths and monkeys;
Rabelo et al., 2017) and water-associated (e.g., caimans and their eggs;
Ramalho, 2012; Torralvo et al., 2017) prey species allows jaguars to 
reside yearlong in flooded forests, including the 4- to 6-month-long
high-water season (Ramalho et al., 2009; Ramalho, 2012)."
"Jaguar probability of site occupancy was positively influenced by
the abundance of both howlers and sloths (Table 1; Fig. 2a and b).
Although both estimates were not significant at HPD95 (i.e., the HPD95
interval included the zero), we found strong evidence that sloth and
howler abundances increase the probability of habitat occupancy by
jaguars [likelihood estimates: p (β1 > 0) = 0.93 and p
(β2 > 0) = 0.94, respectively]. We estimated a similar proportion of
island and continuous forest sites used by jaguars (ψ = 0.75, HPD95:
0.36–1.00, Fig. 2c). Additionally, we found that the abundances of both
sloths and howlers have similar effects on jaguar probability of occurrence "
https://ppbio.inpa.gov.br/sites/default/...artigo.pdf

Quote:Nw Mexico isn’t the only place where they’re the same size. Peru: 

Again we are talking about the Amazon and still Jaguars there will outsize the Puma, but it's not as exaggerated as it is in the Pantanal, Chaco, Cerrado, Los Llanos etc. 

Quote:Pumas in Patagonia are eating cape hares

I will 100% guarantee you that Guanaco make up way more prey consumption than hare for any Cougar in Patagonia. 
You need to understand a hare is 1/100th the size of a Guanaco and one Guanaco will substantially contribute far more to a Cougars diet than 20 hare but the hare's quantity will skew the results. The reason Patagonia is the only place on earth where you see numerous Cougars feeding on a single carcass isn't because of Hares, trust me. 
This is also shown in the study with regards to the "prey consumed" table. 

Quote:If they’re large here then it would only be because of the couple thousand guanacos here as opposed to the many reasons why pantanal Jaguars reach enourmous sizes. Millions of yacare caiman, 3000 cattle ranches in the region, 0 competition, everything else is also on the roster as prey vs puma population that has only 1 wild prey animal over 5kg. It’s true that Patagonian pumas are apex predators, but according to what you’ve been saying about Jaguars being dominant over pumas, jags would be dominant in every part of their range as well. But they’re small in many places. Guess what? Jaguars are apex predators in the cerrado as well, yet you decide to remind me that there are 140kg pantanal Jaguars! Why aren’t we comparing Amazon jag and Patagonian puma sizes? Both are apexes right? Why is it that one apex niche population is smaller than another apex niche population? I think it might have to do with the prey base that the pantanal has!

This excuse holds no water.
Guanaco numbers in Patagonia are between 100-200 thousand at least. There are also immense sheep farms which contribute to Cougar prey. And of course because of the density of prey you also have the highest cougar density on earth. And like the Pantanal Jaguars, these cougars have no competition. 
Also, tell me again where Jaguars are small since you said "many places." And what does the Cerrado have to do with anything? You realize jaguars are also massive in the Cerrado, only slightly smaller than Pantanal ones. Lastly, I think I've explained the differences between the Amazon compared to elsewhere pretty well. 

Quote:Several male pumas from this region weighing around 90 kilograms. Don’t most male Jaguars in the pantanal weigh around this much? Even then pantanal Jaguars have a much better prey base. Some of these pumas mainly killed and ate livestock. Jaguars in the pantanal eat everything in their territory and the abundance of livestock as well as their own favored wild prey is much higher. It would be foolish to believe that 100 kilograms is the max weight for male pumas btw. There have been many records from scientific literature of male pumas weighing upwards of 100kg, if you’d like I can post some of them.

There is a difference between Per. Comm and actually weighed first hand. And once again, the average male jaguar in the pantanal is 108 kgs which is significantly heavier than any cougar population and heavier than almost any cougar ever weighed. There is one claimed to have been close to 110kg in Patagonia but not confirmed. 
Just scroll through here  https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-modern-...ld-cougars
You'll quickly see that verified 100kg Cougars are extremely lacking on top of how rare a 90kg Cougar is. They're much like Leopards, 70-80kg is a good sized male, 90kg is exceptional and 100kg is extremely rare.

What are you talking about? Adult guanaco arent free kills for pumas. And if you think that they are killing adult guanaco for every single meal youre mistaken. 

*This image is copyright of its original author

23% guanaco, 50% cape hare, 5% sheep. 405 scats not a single horse. A very small percentage of pumas may have access to domestic prey, but most of them are clearly hunting wild prey and that too struggling to do so. In torres del paine NP there is almost no cover for these pumas to stalk their prey. If they manage to somehow catch a large guanaco they would then have to overpower it which doesnt always happen: https://youtu.be/eIt0ub7PhWY
Idk if you saw the new netflix documentary but in the patagonia episode theres a clip of a female puma failing to overpower a large guanaco after grabbing its neck > falling down > getting back up and trying again 3 times. How often do you really think a puma is going to successfully kill and eat an adult guanaco? Once or twice a week at most. They are obviously capable of doing so including young and female pumas but because of all the factors that make hunting so difficult in patagonia we know that this doesnt happen often. The favored prey of male pumas are most definitely large adult guanacos. Given how hard it is to stalk in an area with no cover, outrun then overpower an animal 2-3 times your size, and repeat until you get large, ofc as a population they arent exceptionally sized like pantanal jags are to other populations. 

You said the largest amazonian jag weighed 70kg. First of all im 100% sure this is a contradiction to everything youve said about these jags in CF. Secondly, in most parts of the brazillian amazon adult male jags weigh 70kg on avg because not every region floods. You’re thinking of the japura river jags which live in forests that get seasonal floods. 

Patagonia cannot be compared to cerrado obviously. Cerrado is closer to pantanal in terms of wild prey and domestic prey abundance. It is home to several terrestrial mammal species above 50kg while patagonia only has one. 

Those weights i posted were from pampas, not patagonia. I never brought up patagonian pumas actually. Here are some extra weights anyways: 

*This image is copyright of its original author

Quote:What are you talking about? Adult guanaco arent free kills for pumas. And if you think that they are killing adult guanaco for every single meal youre mistaken. 

What are you talking about?
Where did I say any of that? 

Quote:23% guanaco, 50% cape hare, 5% sheep. 405 scats not a single horse. A very small percentage of pumas may have access to domestic prey, but most of them are clearly hunting wild prey and that too struggling to do so. In torres del paine NP there is almost no cover for these pumas to stalk their prey. If they manage to somehow catch a large guanaco they would then have to overpower it which doesnt always happen: https://youtu.be/eIt0ub7PhWY

Again this is scat sample which means obviously Hare should show up more, it's smaller and easier to catch but in terms of body weight contribution to Cougars its far less. Meaning Cougars eat way more Guanaco meat a year than Hare. 

Quote:Idk if you saw the new netflix documentary but in the patagonia episode theres a clip of a female puma failing to overpower a large guanaco after grabbing its neck > falling down > getting back up and trying again 3 times. How often do you really think a puma is going to successfully kill and eat an adult guanaco? Once or twice a week at most. They are obviously capable of doing so including young and female pumas but because of all the factors that make hunting so difficult in patagonia we know that this doesnt happen often. The favored prey of male pumas are most definitely large adult guanacos. Given how hard it is to stalk in an area with no cover, outrun then overpower an animal 2-3 times your size, and repeat until you get large, ofc as a population they arent exceptionally sized like pantanal jags are to other populations. 

Your point is what exactly? That Puma fail to catch prey time to time? 
Can you provide a single big cat that has a 100% success rate?
And since you watched that documentary I know you saw the part about them being the densely populated Puma habitat on earth as well as numerous mention of the Guanaco being the most important prey item to the Pumas.

And of course they are exceptionally sized, where are you getting this claim? They are literally the largest population of Cougars on earth or tied at worst. 

Quote:You said the largest amazonian jag weighed 70kg. First of all im 100% sure this is a contradiction to everything youve said about these jags in CF. Secondly, in most parts of the brazillian amazon adult male jags weigh 70kg on avg because not every region floods. You’re thinking of the japura river jags which live in forests that get seasonal floods. 

Care to explain how this "contradicts" anything I've said? 
Next, would you mind showing me where Brazilian Amazon Jags weigh 70kg on average? 

Quote:Patagonia cannot be compared to cerrado obviously. Cerrado is closer to pantanal in terms of wild prey and domestic prey abundance. It is home to several terrestrial mammal species above 50kg while patagonia only has one. 

Vicuna also get about 50kg as well as domestic sheep. But it doesn't matter since the prey biomass in these parks is the same. Hence why Patagonia houses the highest density of Cougars, because the prey can support it. And this argument can quickly be turned upside down the second we bring N. American Cougars into the conversation. 

Quote:My point was that they had the ability to take advantage of large reptile populations while pumas cant. 

You know why they have the ability to take advantage? Because they're better equipped. They're more powerful, stronger jaws and more comfortable in the water. If Cougars could dominate those areas, they would. Anywhere you find larger prey and cougars and jaguars coexist, the Jaguars will dominate that area. 

Quote:Mean prey size for jags and pumas are the same in xeric areas, and similar in forests but only in floodplains is the jag’s mpw double that of the puma.

Look at the +- and do you know what Xeric areas are? 
You're talking about desert like shrubland. Cougars are built for speed and leaping, Jags are built for power. Jags are short burst cats meant to go after larger prey, preferably in a marsh setting, Cougars are the opposite. 

Quote:107kg was 1 of the only 7 male weights we have for this population. The largest jaguar population has a much better prey base than these pumas. Name one wild prey species that pumas have been confirmed preying on in the pampas region.

*This image is copyright of its original author

And 107kg is an outlier while 107kg for a Jaguar is standard in the Pantanal. And still 40kg less than their outliers. 
You're talking about a 40% difference. 

Quote:Fun fact pumas vary in size! 

Another fun fact is that Jaguars here are much larger than the Cougars. Reply