Modern Weights and Measurements of Wild Lions

[SpinoRex]

(02-14-2022, 08:28 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(02-13-2022, 05:10 AM)SpinoRex Wrote: You are pointing most of the time individual ones. So in terms of a average food intake on a daily basis thats pretty useless. Among all cats there is no consistence in energy intake. These estimates alone were mere estimations by Smuts and later observed, which made the data usable in the first place(not the estimate of the MDR alone). Even if these are estimates i doubt these are significantly different as they are based on observation to check the estimated MDR, which is alone not much of use. (There are countless estimated food intakes for both species)

A male lion as i said before has to share his food with a pride. Thus it has less meat available and therefore cant eat as much as a nonterretorial male when both have a dead carcass. Thats not a misconception but a clear cut fact and the fact that the difference was significant shows it. Alone that should a enlightment because basically its mentioning "pack" male lions and "solitary" lions. Tigers will represent those solitary lions if not even in a more advanced version. Not mentioning there are more annoying scavengers in africa and some animals like Hyenas and maybe Wild dogs are a proper threat to lone lions. Hyenas are able to steal the whole prey and could even kill a male lion. And how i can forget it.... a lion pride arrives... you have no chance. Also as i pointed out nearly every heavy lions were nomadic ones(small coalition) or solitary ones(Mount Kenya Lion). But fact is that most nonterretorial males didnt make it as reported by Rob to me, which is pretty understandable based on the infos he shared with me. (I know boldchamp from the name but i dont know what you discussed with him. I wasnt active in those old forums and i dont have acess to them.)

Also regarding that i found this study as well. Its more or less again confirming it.

Quote:https://www.researchgate.net/publication...Strategies

Average digestible energy intakes (DEI) of individual cats are plotted against body mass in Figure 3. A large difference in energy intakes of lions and tigers was evident. For example, the DEI of large male lions was only about half that of the similarly sized male Bengal X Siberian tigers. The natural logarithm (In) of digestible energy intake was plotted against In body mass to examine the scaling of energy intake to body mass (Figure 4). All cats did not appear to follow the same scaling relationship. For example, lions and young clouded leopards appeared to fall on the predicted line that represents extrapolation of the maintenance energy requirements of domestic cats, but cheetahs, Sumatran tigers and Bengal X Siberian tigers had considerably higher energy intakes.

The comparison(which is based on a large sample) of solitary lions and pride lions is enough. Even more so when you compare africa and india, which are in terms of "action" pretty different (at least nowadays, idk how it was in the past).

The really good data comes from Sunquist. The female tigers alone consumed around 16 kg per day and the males 19 kg and that in several days and not in one day observation. Compare that to Smuts pride males (not the calculated MDR but the estimated food intake based on the observation) and it becomes clear. Even if there are some explanations here and there a difference of 9.4 kg vs 19 k shows it. A tiger is basically a solitary/nomadic lion with less difficulties. 

For me the main study for this was the comparison between nonterretorial lions and terretorial lions. Also again beside thats nonterretorial ones killed larger preys which is beside the "pride factor" also important.

I dont have the time now to answer the other posts. Will do it later.

You are not getting to point or you are ignoring the information?

The estimations are not from Smuts but from the source of your table. Even then, the values of 6 - 7 kg per day, which is the same as tigers, are just that, estimations of a plausible daily food intake, but as you should know big cats do not eat daily, they eat when they can and may pass one week without eating. That is why they have the strategy to eat as much as they can when they have the availability and lions eat the most because they have the highes prey bases of all the big cats, followed by leopards.

Your point that lone lions eat more than pride lions do not make sense at all. A pride lion eat what he want when he want, and like @Pckts says, they do not share they food (maybe only to its cubs and only when there is plenty of food). Even tigers share more food with others than the male lion. This is the fact, and if the prey hunted in finished in that same day, they just hunt the next day, lions had an easy life (relative speaking) than other great cats. Leopards suffer losses to other big predators, tigers live in low density prey areas and jaguar had only small preys. Lions, on the other hand, had high prey densities in most of the places where they trive, like in Kenya-Tanzania-Etosha-South Africa-Namibia.

In this case, scavengers may affect a pride significanlty only when there are low seasons of prey, otherwise, they only need to kill other prey and that solve the problem.

Under the study of the food intake, you are using CAPTIVE animals to make a claim over WILD animals, that simple do not make sense.


In the case of the tigers, Sunquist do not say that a female eat 16 kg and a male 19 kg especifically, he did not make such distintion and the table is clear, the range is between 14 to 19 kg in both sexes in a 24 hours period. Check also what Schaller said, there are several records of tigresses eating as low as 10 kg, and that was recorded in Nepal too, thanks to Dr Tamang (1982). You are ignoring ALL the information that proves that lions gorge themselves with over 33 kg and you are using only that table that is not even from Smuts directly. All cats try to eat as much as they can, an intake of 9 kg for a male lion will not be enogh to sustain its large size.

So, real intake in lions and tigers can be between 10 - 35 kg based in real observations, ESTIMATED daily food intake is between 6 - 7 kg for male and females of both species. That is the real information based in real events. Lions and tigers had the same food intake, and lions hunt more often thanks to its prey density which contrarrest the share of the kills. Tigers kill one prey every 7-8 days (Sunquist, 1981).

I said before the calculated estimates alone such as MDR are useless. But why? Smuts is assuming that the Kruger lions are larger than the Kenya males, which i doubt in terms of skeleton size(at least not that much). But generally a minimum daily food intake should be in that range but cant give you any idea of the true food intake of a specific lion population.

The numbers labeled as MDR are estimates based on estimates and talking about the minimum(useless to determine the food intake accurately for collared lions as its giving the c. minimum food intake). I was talking about the real food intake of those lions and the clear cut statement from the study(T males did not consume more or less than the estimated MDR, but NT males did) when it comes to prey killed and food intake. One thing that should be noted is that Terretorial males also obtained significantly more meat from the carcass they killed themselves, showing similaritties to nonterretorial males when behaving like them.

But NT males wont be heavier overall with some exceptions or small alliances (which arent fully solitary but still its more or less close to it as killling preys is much easier)

The numbers from the nepal study ate between 14-19 kg on average but calculating the average its c.16 kg for females and c.19 kg for males. Reply