Modern Weights and Measurements of Wild Lions

[GuateGojira]

(02-11-2022, 09:21 AM)Khan85 Wrote: Hello Guate, 

I think there were two sets of ages given for lions weighed by Dr. MacFarlane. 

In the section of "Lion Measurements" you can see that before the measurements they mentioned the date of collaring and next to that, the age. I believe this was the estimated age at the time of collaring those lions. 

And then in the section - "Chapter 3: Lions of Central Kalahari Game Reserve - General methods" there is another table with a column of age of lions and next to that a column of reason of death. I think this second column of age of lions is the estimated age at the time of their death. 

Do correct me if I am wrong!

I checked and in fact the appendix with the measurements suggest what you say. However there is no date for "Chico", which is interesting and again it leave us with doubth. The other table indeed mention the age when they died as the age is different, is older. So you have a point there.

However, all these ages are estimated and I found something that will fix the confusion, check this:

*This image is copyright of its original author

As we can see, all male lions were adults over 3 years old including "Chico", and that is why in page 100 you can see that in the average they included the 7 weights, from the 6 weighed males, with a result of 209 kg.

*This image is copyright of its original author

End of the confusion.


Other case that I remember is from tigress T-03 (The Roaring tigress) from Chitwan NP, Nepal. Sunquist (1981) states that was an adult (over 3 years old) but Tamang (1982) was more specific and mention that when she was capture the third time, when she weighed 129 kg, she was 30 months old (2.5 years) and even then she was included in the samples of the adults females. Reply