Modern Weights and Measurements of Wild Lions

[LandSeaLion]

(07-01-2021, 12:33 AM)Pckts Wrote: But regardless, it's an imperfect science, many cats old weight differently and it's hard to tell how much exactly one has eaten or not. A perfect example is a Lion like Earless who generally looks full all the time while other Lions will look much more empty.

Yep, this was mentioned by de Waal et al (2004). The 225kg lion in the 1980 study looked like he had recently eaten, but a post-mortem showed that he was actually just a chonky boy:

“However, this practice to correct body mass for the remains of the last meal that might still be contained in the stomach or digestive tract may be misleading and can introduce substantial error. For example, Smuts et al. (1980) reported on a 5-year-old male lion that was in excellent physical condition and weighed 225 kg. Externally the lion would have been classed as having an above average stomach fill. However, a postmortem showed that it had an empty stomach but contained large amounts of subcutaneous and intestinal fat.” Reply