Size comparisons

[Luipaard]

"The fact is, 80kg-100kg leopards are freaks."

Maybe for most of leopard subspecies but not for the larger ones, such as Sri lankan, Persian and Central African leopards and the exception of some large Sabi Sands male leopards. You shouldn't fixate just on African or Indian leopards and think their appearance and weight are the norm. There are 9 subspecies and each one is different from another. Just becouse African savannah leopards average 60-65kg doesn't mean other subspecies can't reach higher.

I guess those 9 Persian leopards of the weight chart I shared are all freaks, since they weigh between 75-115kg. Lucky researchers I must say.

"We dont even have a reliable weight above 80kgs for any African leopards"

Well there are other subspecies who do have a reliable weight above 80kg so that argument is invalid. And it's also unfortunate that those from the equatorial forests are one of the least documented leopards. Based on what we have (skull measurements, camera traps, ...), these leopards are most likely the biggest subspecies.


"And while skulls are big in Congo leopards they arent larger than pantanal skulls"

The biggest male leopard skull from scientific source is 290+mm long, 186mm wide from D.R. Congo (Van Neer 2013). Which is higher than +90kg male jaguars:

*This image is copyright of its original author

I'm not saying it's larger than the largest of all jaguars, but they definitely overlap in size.

The single most impressive leopard specimen is the skull KBIN 8640 held in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. It is that of an old male leopard killed in the North Eastern DR Congo in the 1940s. The skull has a condylobasal length of 264mm and a zygomatic width of 186mm. Its greatest length isn't stated as the occipital crest was probably damaged but would've easily been in the 290-300mm range. In any case the condylobasal length can be considered at least as good a measure of overall skull size and this skull well exceeds others I am aware of which are all below 255mm in this measurement. To put things in perspective this leopard skull would easily place among very big male Pantanal or Llanos jaguar skulls with respect to skull length at least. This leopard would've comfortably been 90kg+ and even 100kgs may be conservative. For comparison, the heaviest male jaguar weighed for which skull measurements are available (there are several) was a male from the Venezuelan Llanos documented by Hoogenstein and Mondolfi which weighed 121kg (empty stomach) with a condylobasal skull length of 272mm and a zygomatic width of 185mm. Admittedly, this huge jaguar had a relatively narrow skull for its species but nonetheless very impressive that a leopard can have a skull comparable in dimensions to one of the largest jaguars ever recorded.

"nor have I seen anyone look into a correlation of skull size to body size in Jags and Leopards."

Well I do

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

I can show you a dozen more examples but I think these are enough to make my point.

"Also, we still have 1 individuals weight of 40kgs from the congo."

That's only becouse they're barely being researched. There's a lot of skull documentation though, which is a pretty good indicator of how big an animal is. And those skull measurements clearly rival those of jaguars.

"In regards to persians, the 115 kg claim is hardly convincing considering that cat was missing a paw and looked fairly small on the table."

What about the other males? There are 3 more in the 90-95kg weight range and those weights aren't exceptional for Persian males. Here are some random big Persian males who I consider bigger than 75kg:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

"What you do see is many in the 45-70kg range which is your standard leopard weight"

I'm pretty sure I don't need to tell you about the sexual dimorphism with leopards. When they discovered leopards in Central Africa, they thought the males were a different subspecies just becouse of the massive size difference. Here's an example of 2 mating leopards in Gabon:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Another great example:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

This shouldn't really be a discussion, there's a lot of scientific evidence that certain leopard subspecies overlap in size with Pantanal jaguars. I'd love to see the largest leopard ever against the largest jaguar. Reply