Modern weights and measurements on wild tigers

[SpinoRex]

(01-27-2022, 06:22 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(01-27-2022, 04:42 AM)SpinoRex Wrote: The tigers in Panna are measured over curves as Sunal Told me. The only areas where straight line is used is in UP (Pillibhit) and Corbett at least from the infos we have now. The method used by Sunquist is a mixture which should have just slight differences.

About M105 i agree. Using his daily food intake and possibility of being gorged his empty weight must have been exactly c.260 kg and i got also 256 kg. Even if he would be totally full (30 kg region) he still wouldnt be lower than 250 kg ig, which justifies the estimate. And combined with the Chest Girth - Weight calculation there should be no problem at all.

Also i was recently checking some datas. There was a 6-7 year old male weighed in Bhutan by the GTC. Found a twitter post by a wildlife biologist who is working "there" reporting about that as well. It was collared in 2018

I will like to add a few remarks.

Technically all the great cats are measured "over curves" by scientists so we need to know specific details of the measurement method used, if they hold the tape straight, or if they pressed the tape in all the curves of the back, or it they press it just in a few points to hold the tape, etc. (Yes, measuring over curves is a mess, it depends of who made the measurements). I saw the answer from Sunal and is a very short one and we will need more details. The straigh line method used by Dr Sunquist is the closest one to the method "between pegs", he explained this to me twice, and those from north of India look like if they used the same method. We will need more details from the tigers of Panna to actually be sure that they pressed the tape in all the contours of the back, or if they only hold the tape on the back, in a straigh form from the tip to tip, with no pressing. Those are the important details.

About the food intake of Nepalese tigers, you need to remember that none of the tigers was fully feed at the capture, again confirmed by Dr Sunquist. Also, as Fiona Sunquist describes in the book "Tiger Moon", all the tigers were disturbed at they kills, so none of them had the daily food intake, in fact if you take in count that the baits were prepared in the afternoon before sunset, that tigers killed the tigers in the pure nigh at about 8 pm (maybe latter than that) and that the capture party drived the tigers as earlier than 5 am and captures are all in the very morning, the tigers had a window of just 10 hours more or less to eat, that is not enough time to get the 14-19 kg calculated to be eat in a day. Take in cound that those meausrements of food intake were not taken during the tiger captures, as they focused in the tigers itselfs, they weighed the carcases in different situations, from tigers that were already tagged. Dr Sunquist recorded 38 events, that is more than the 15 capture events during his work time. So, capture of tigers were focused on that, and measurement of food intake was done in a different event. In conclution, the amount of food of 14 - 19 is in a 24 hours period and captured tigers that all were disturbed at they kills do not had the time to eat in full (in fact, some of them returned to continue to eat after they capture and collaring), so the amount in each tiger was less than the 24 hours intake. I explained all this process in previous posts for clarification.

I have the information of the 3 tigers from Bhutan (one male and 2 females), but I did not use it because I still don't have personal confirmation of the numbers. However I will include them now as I will add a note that these weights are reported but still not verified by me. Maybe in the future we could see a document with details of they captures.

Thanks for your answer.

I said worst case, that is, even if they had been full, the estimate of about 260 kg would be correct. It was more or less a "confirmation" from my side

Also, I don't think tigers need 24h to eat their food. 10 hours are therefore normally enough, if one calculates their sleep time (65%). But on the whole, these are only speculations, since we do not know the exact backgrounds. 

As for the curve measurements I am sure most use the Classic Method. But I will ask Sunal again about this. He is relatively stressed at the moment so I can't promise if I will get the answer quickly. Reply