The Terai Tiger

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(07-06-2019, 07:48 AM)Rishi Wrote:

(07-02-2019, 04:25 PM)Pckts Wrote: But that being said, the one person who's seen both Gulrighat and Umarpani wouldn't say which is larger but did say that Dudhwa Tigers should be competing with the largest Tigers in C. India, Kanha Cats.

Watch videos of Wagdoh and these boys and I think you'll notice a difference fairly fast when it comes to robustness and frame size looks comparable to me.

Anyway a comparison between those two-three individuals was not my point... What i'm saying is when you see a set of camera-trap photos, then there's no noticeable difference in size between any of the populations, if there is any. The stature varies a bit, but a random tiger from terai or northeast, could very easily pass of as a random tigers from elsewhere. Nor does a big tiger from the north, atleast look, any bigger than a big central India's one.
I don't know why everyone finds them to be so big, but most of them like Gulrighat or Charger, look nothing special compared to other dominant males.

Then there's the matter robustness & size. I found out how big an issue this could be some time ago...

See, the Kathmandu Central Zoo in Nepal has a massive looking male. His photos have been shared here before with just the captions. (Know this one, @Jimmy?)

*This image is copyright of its original author

Impressed by his robustness, i did some digging & multiple eye-witnesses told me that this one was no larger than a german shephard dog. He was even shorter than his mates.
That & my experience with captive Sundarban tigers have made me very wary about assuming size based of photos, videos, or even naked sight. Half the people who've seen both Sundarban & Terai tigers in wild would tells they noticed no size difference. 

The Kazi & Dudhwa-Pilibhit "giant"s could all be below 1m high & we could all be under complete misconception.

My old profile was deleted for no reason so I made a new one. Anyways coming back to the point, I won't state my opinion as growing up seeing Terai Tigers I might be termed off as being biased but there are some things that I don't agree with at all.

1. The example of the zoo tiger from Nepal is a flawed one. You talk about how videos could be misleading and yet you believe eye-witnesses regarding the small size of this tiger. If these people from the zoo can be believed then someone like Dr. Wasif Jamshed can be believed too. Now his tiger from Dudhwa might not be 340 KG but still must be close to that figure and that animal cannot be a small or short one. 

2. Let's talk about size. I do agree that videos can be very misleading. I remember being a fan of wrestling when I was a kid and not really realizing how big a typical wrestler can be. Then when I went to a show I saw the really huge one's stand out easily. Same applies to Tigers. Normal individuals might be difficult to identify but an exceptional individual from close will be easy to spot as a big Tiger. Now there might be something to Terai and Kaziranga tigers that even people like Valmik Thapar, Dr. Raghu Chundawat have talked about the exceptional size of these tigers. It's simply because they are big.
One example is the video of the fight between Umarpani and MB2. It's just easy to not miss that Umarpani had a significant size advantage over his rival.
Another example is from @Pckts journey where he saw Link 8 female and in a matter of seconds he realized it was the biggest female cat he'd ever seen. Exceptional individuals are easy to figure out with the naked eye and most of Tiger experts have claimed that Terai and Kaziranga tigers are on some other level.

3. The gypsy theory has been talked about in Pckts post so I won't talk about it again.

4. The Sunderbans and Terai tigers being the same size for one is claim taken too far. And talking about half of the people who've seen both believe that is again something I don't agree with as never in my life have I heard that from anyone. 

5. Again I don't want to be coming off as a Terai Tigers fanboy. I myself agree that the best specimen from Kanha or even Bandipur in the south will match up to most of the tigers from Terai and Kaziranga but on average Terai and Kaziranga has an edge and even the history points towards that. (Even the Hasinger Tiger was from the Dudhwa Region) Reply