Modern Weights and Measurements of Jaguars

[Balam]

(06-05-2023, 09:58 PM)ravager Wrote: @Balam thank you for your answer, this was the 155kg male I was talking about




A message about a jaguar weighing 155kg

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I was wondering if anyone else had more info on this jaguar. I also have another question, do you regularly update these tables?



https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-K1IffPe7meDPhh2RUWSIzfTucVPjKWv4f63qGzD8SM/edit#gid=26229435

This is my first time seeing this correspondence! Do you know who initially posted that conversation? Onçafari may be referring to Joker in this instance as I don't know of any other jaguar captured by them over 140 kg just yet.

Some things to keep in mind about Joker based on his measurements and weight that I will remind of here:

Joker showed a partial weight of 140 kg on an analog scale because he couldn't be fully lifted up, so his total weight was greater than that but is unclear by how much. Perhaps Onçafari did some kind of regression equation based on his measurements to arrive at that 155 kg value? Assuming this is the same male of course. It's also important to remember that his partial weight is recorded in our database, so that would decrease the overall average.

Based on the body measurements registered by Joker, he would've been in the lower end of an adult male lion/tiger or an extremely large female of those species. I have already made a post about this before but since I'm posting here again let me go in-depth on this and at the same time clear some confusions I saw from a conversation about this on the previous page:

Here we have the measurements chart of Joker and Shaka alongside two lions and a leopard from Namibia:

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Here we have the measurements of Bengal tigers from northern India based on the Cooh Behar records of 1908 collected by Guate Gojira:

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As for the data from Hewett, perhaps Peter could you confirm if those records were taken following the curves of the body, and do you have by any chance the HBL measurements? Total body length would yield inaccurate results for comparison purposes since tigers have proportionally longer tails than jaguars. Here is Guate's compilation:

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My analysis:

To my knowledge, the protocol used for the measuring of Joker and Shaka employed by Onçafari is to follow the lines of the body from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail. This is the standard "over curves" protocol so often discussed here and also used by some specimens from Cooch Behar and by most other institutions with differences here and there on how the tape is placed over the body. By contrast, the two lions and leopards from the ALPRU protocol table had their measurements taken from the incisors to the tip of the tail, in addition to also following the curves of the body, which would make those measurements artificially inflated in comparison to other "over curve" measurements. It's hard to know how many cms this adds but my estimate would be somewhere in between 5-12 cms. If we use 8 cm of extra length to be conservative as to how much to deduct, we get the following conclusions:

• Joker would match the head-to-body length of the male lion at around 180 cm, the female lion would sit at around 172 cm which would match Shaka's length, and the male leopard would be dwarfed at 130 cm (ALPRU table).
• Joker would rank semi-last on Cooch Behar's male tiger table, surpassing slightly only the minimum value for a male over-curves of 179 cm. He would rank 7th on the female tiger table out of a sample of 18 specimens. Shaka would rank 14th out of the 18 female tigers and would rank last on the male table by a difference of 7 cm less than the smallest male tiger.
• In terms of thorax girth, Joker matches the girth of the male lion at 128 cm, surpassing the female lion by 2 cm. Shaka is quite a bit short from all those 3 cats at 108 cm. The leopard has a large chest girth for its species of 87 cm, though still a far cry from the larger cats. Joker would rank 30th of the 44 male tigers from Cooch Behar (some of the tigers above Joker are also in the 128 cm threshold, surpassing him only by a few millimeters), Shaka would not rank. Joker would rank 1st on the female tigers' table and by a long shot as the greatest girth for them was 106.7 cm, Shaka here would rank also 1st compared solely to the tigresses and 2nd after Joker of course.
• Data on the head girth of the tigers seems off in that the measurements we have for the jaguars, as well as data from AfriCat, don't really match that of Cooch Behar, so I'm restraining from making comments until we can clarify the methods used and other nuances.
  

Weight Data Comparison Remarks:

• Tigresses 6, 3, and 2 are interesting because they have body measurements similar to Joker with upper and lower hands in different areas each. Tigress 6 had a weight of 150 kg, an HBL of around 183 cm (3 cm more than Joker), chest girth and shoulder height are null. Tigress 3 had a weight of 163.3 kg, an HBL of 190.5 cm (10.5 cm more than Joker), a chest girth of 104 cm (24 cm less than Joker), a shoulder height of 86 cm (6 cm more than Joker). Tigress 2 had a weight of 155.6 kg, an HBL of 188.6 cm (8.6 cm more than Joker) a chest girth of 104 cm (24 cm less than Joker), and a shoulder height of 85.7 cm (5.7 cm more than Joker). With all of this in mind, Joker would get really close to these tigresses in HBL with the former having an advantage that ranges from 3-10.5 cm, he would greatly surpass them on chest girth with an advantage of at least 24 cm and would be slightly shorter with a shoulder height difference that ranges from 5.7 to 6 cm.
• Joker matched the HBL and chest girth of the 177.5 kg male lion from the ALPRU table, while the lion would likely be taller (we're missing that datum).
• Based on the above analysis, is clear that Joker would fall comfortably in the range of 155-160+ kg range exhibited by those tigresses and lion since the area of the body that accumulates most of the weight is the midsection which places him greatly above the tigresses and right alongside the lion. The other areas of skeletal size such as shoulder height and body length put him very close to the biggest tigresses as well, if only slightly under.
  

This is what I mean by Joker being a "Pleistocene-sized" jaguar. Jaguars from the Pleistocene generally had the sizes of modern large Pantanal specimens, but the largest specimens we have on record are in the 160-180 kg threshold (not including the much larger subspecies P. onca mesembrina that surpassed 200 kg in weight, or the proto-jaguar P. gombaszoegensis).

If the 155 kg specimen Onçafari is referring to is a total weight estimate for Joker, then I think the body measurements for him speak for themselves and make it a reasonable, dare I say conservative, estimate.

In regard to your question about the table. Yes, it is constantly updated, that is why we uploaded it to Google Sheets. Reply