Modern Weights and Measurements of Wild Lions

[GuateGojira]

(03-02-2022, 03:12 AM)Pckts Wrote: His data base is 2nd to none and if you include Stevenson Hamilton, their total data base is gigantic and never have they come close to weighing/measuring a 270kg male or even 250kg for that matter, yet somehow miraculously in Timbavati now a days it seems to be common occurrence according to 2nd hand sources. I'm sorry, but I'll always be skeptical of those claims.

You have a point here. What you say about the sample of Smuts and Stevenson-Hamilton is interesting as the old hunting records shows some males of up to 553 lb (251 kg) but this evidence suggest that those huge males were probably gorged or included food at some point, maybe between 20 - 30 kg. That will make sence as the "empty" belly could be 221 - 231 kg, in the line of the heaviest male of Smuts, from such a huge sample, maybe more than 1000 specimens in total in the entire area. Is just an especulation.

Interesting, the five males that Pitman mentioned from the magazine "The Field" are included in the sample of the lions provided by Campbell to Mr Roberts, which to be fair, are second hand source as Roberts and Pitman were not present when those animals were measured and weighed. So those males should be taken as "Regular reliable" as the Russians said by Slagth et al (2005). I would love to see the Table 36 from Roberts (1951), that will provide more information on size, skulls and many other details. If someone in the US is near to a library with that book, you should take a picture of it, it will be awesome!

Now something completelly unrelated. I was also checking this image, that we normally use in the "modern" records section:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Well, I told to SpinoRex to found the original source of the data because he says that the smaller lions were subadults, but he did not presented evidence of this claim. So I dig more and I fount the original sources (the one from "in litt." obviously not), not without a couple of surprices.

First, Smithers of 1971:

*This image is copyright of its original author

As we can see, there is no remark that those male lions were subadult or young and Smithers was enfatic in the details as we can see in other tables, like this one from leopards.

*This image is copyright of its original author

So it seems that lions in that area are smaller than those from Southern areas as I suspected, they are not subadults. And before the "fans" start claiming that the giant record weights are "reliable", check that Smithers clearly says that those figures need to be verified and "await" confirmation, plus the fact that he did not witness those hunts and did not saw those animals, not even Mr Best, so those are from a third party source and based in the huge figures reported, they are definitelly unreliable (for some reason they were not published, probably because Mr Best also believed that were not accurate, specially the female one).

Now, Smithers & Wilson (1979):

*This image is copyright of its original author

This is the original image of the page 73 where are the records of the lions. The page 72 is for leopards and the 74 is already from small cats. As we can see, those lions were not captured for scientific purposes, but came from hunting records via a second person (talking about the big sample of 18 specimens). So we are seeing here a tendency that these "reliable" records that are often used because they came from scientific books (well actually they are just natural guides per se) are from second and third persons, and that contradicts the discriminate process stablished by Slagth et al (2005) about the reliability on records. Sadly, if these figures were from tigers, the "fans" on the other forum will jump claiming that are unreliable and that should be excluded, but as these figures came from lions they swallows it easily, but well........ the hypocresy.

Now, what is interesting is that the TL (total length) figures are not the ones quoted in the image that all of us use, in fact those lengths of 87 - 95 m seems more like tail lenghts and those should be cm, not m (please don't insist SpinoRex, there are no lions of 9 meters.... just a joke ), that is my guess. In the limited preview I was not able to see if the correct total lengths are available in other part of the body of the document, like an "errata" (erratum or corrections) or like an appendix, so for the moment I can only guess that are in some part of the book.

As we can see, those "first hand scientific" records are not that, they are just second (or third) hand hunting records provided by other persons to the authors, like Roberts and Smithers (Pitman do not count as his book never intented to be a scientific source but just a book that include records). Interesting, don't you think?

But that is the problem with the records of lions, there is not a clear line where you can say that are "scientific" or "hunting", as they are mixed. With tigers, on the other hand, is pretty simple, but with jaguars and specially with leopards, the line is diffuse too. Reply