Modern Weights and Measurements of Wild Lions

[Charger01]

(11-04-2020, 01:11 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(10-19-2020, 08:42 PM)Khan85 Wrote: Also, I recently read about these two "mamuding lions" who killed 244 cattle in one year and weighed 800lbs and 700lbs 

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Funny thing is I haven't seen any reliable piece of info about these lions, no pics, any documents how they were weighed, any regard of food content, any records nothing. Even Guinness recognises the 313kgs lion as the biggest one from the wild and he can be observed in many documents and books. Nothing mentions of these two lions. 

Are these real or just gross exaggerations?

I saw that some "fans" in the web are using these two records as a "reliable" figure that proves that lions were giants in modern days. Sorry to say this but that is totally ridiculous!!! 

We had a huge sample of 273 weights of wild adult male lions from Africa and Asia that ranges from 130 to 260 kg (a continuous list with a difference between weights of no more than 5-10 kg), then it jumps to two record specimens of 272 kg, one in Kenya and other in South Africa, and after that it jumps again 41 kg from nowhere up to a single figure of 313 kg for the record lion accepted by Guinness, and that is all. After that there are not heavier wild lions on record, just some captive ones and very few by the way. 
  
Now, as Shadow said, those records from Guinness are disputable by very good reasons. The figure of 313 kg was first mentioned in some old record book from 1930-1940 but do not presented any evidence (any picture, measurement or any extra data) appart from the report of the hunter Lennox Anderson and that "several people" checked the figure, and after that is mentioned again as a "record" by Gerald Wood in the book "Animal Facts and Feats - one of the Guinness family of book" from 1972 and latter copy-pasted by the next editions. It was until the last edition of 1981 that he actually present the picture of the animal and the surprise is that the stuffed specimen was no bigger than an average size lion that will be very lucky if it weighed 181 kg, maybe less! So, what happen with the "giant" described and perpetuated by the old books? It was just a hearsay? Lennox just exagerated? We dont know for sure, but also we need to add to the fact that the support prase that says that "several people check it" do not add any reliability to the record, in fact that several people could be just watching and agreeing with the figure produced by the railway scale used to weigh this lion. In any part says that "officials" checked this figure like some "fans" says, it only mention "people", they could be just the friends of Lennox, also we do not know how reliable was that scale. So taking in count all these facts and the issue that no measurement or skull length was preserved from this lion, we need to conclude that there is no reliable evidence to state that the figure of 313 kg was real or accurate and should be discarted as alll the figures of Amur tigers from 1930 - 1950 that were also discarted by Dr Slaght and his team in 2005.

The same can by said for the tiger of 389 kg of David Hasinger. In this case we have much more evidence, we have several pictures, measurements, reports from officials in India and even from the Smithsonian museum, so we could say that the figure is realiable, correct? Well actually no, and the problem is that if we use the logic and the information available, the morphological data of this tiger do not match. For example, we have a sample of 167 adult male tigers from India, Nepal and Bangladesh, this males range from 97 to 272 kg (the last weight came from two males captured by Scientists in Chitwan NP, Nepal). Latter we have a list of 6 exceptional specimens that range from 276 to 320 kg, with a difference of no more than 10 kg between each other, so we can have a reliable explanation about its huge weights (probably they were baited at the moment of the hunt or they were cattle killers and consequently very bulky). After this there is no other weight from Bengal tigers and there is a jump of 69 kg from nowhere up to the 389 kg record of Hasinger. This simple do not make any sence, unless that this tiger was a freak giant, but the other information do not support these. If we see the picture, we can see that while the reported length of 322 cm between pegs seems plausible, the animal do not look like a freak giant, in fact we can estimate a weight between 200 - 260 kg (depending of the picture that we see, as there are two and in different position). Also when we see the report of the skull size it says that measured only about 14 inches, which is just the size of an average sized skull based in Mazak (2013). So, based in this information we can see that while this tiger DO existed, we do not know how reliable was that weight or if the scale at the sugar plantation that they used was accurate or not. 
 
So, this is what we know about the record specimens from Guinness and the same can be done with many of the reports. Please take in count that after the publication of the records by Gerald Wood, the next editors of Guinness just copy pasted his reports and in some cases they even exagerated some of them. Example of this is that the biggest anaconda that Wood believed it was reliable was estimated to weight about 400 lb, but now the Guinness books quoted that actually "weighed" 500 lb! First that is not the figure quoted by Wood and second that animal was not weighed but just estimated and taking in count that the figure came from a second hand source, is possible that the entire report was incorrect or just exagerations. 

Now, after this looooooong explanation about why these two record lion and tiger, that we had fair information about them, fail to qualify as reliable records, now we can see why these two lions of apparently 700 and 800 lb are so unreliable. There is no other source in the entire lion litterature that actually knew or reported or even acepted these two figures, there is no back up for these weighs, no measurements, not pictures, no skulls, just nothing! Even worst, the round and perfectly created numbers make these figures even more suspicios as normally the figures recorded are not exact at the next pound. If we use the method to check reliability on the weights used by Dr Slagth and his team when they studied the old records of Amur tigers, these two lions of 700 and 800 lb will be clasified as TOTALLY UNRELIABLE, because it is not a first hand source, there is no picture or any measurements and it is not mentioned in any old or modern lion litterature, besides is out of any normal range of size for modern lions. So, any person with a gram of brain will know that these two lion figures are fake, unreliable and just gross exagerations. 


Finally, we need to understand that these figures of 700 and 800 lb represent 318 and 363 kg respectively, and if we know a little about Paleontology, we can see that these figures, specially the last one, belongs only to the biggest specimens of Felidae in the prehistory, the giant cave "lions" Panthera spelaea, Panthera atrox the giant Pleistocene tiger Panthera tigris soloensis, and also the biggest saber tooth cats Amphimachairodus kabir and the magnificent Smilodon populator. There is no way that a modern tiger or lion can surpass the 320 kg figure naturally in the wild, unless that is a real "freak giant" or if it had a good amount of food and/or fat in the belly. So, it is important to use the logic on this, and not just use any random figure that we found in the web, like this little group of "fanatics" of the lion-vs-tiger stupid debate. 
 
Hope this helps the clarify this issue ones for all. 

Greetings.

Thanks for clearing it, Guate! Reply