Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences

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I just linked this article to Amur tigers thread (http://programmes.putin.kremlin.ru/en/tiger/news/25563), but there was this sentence, which I found interesting, when talking about lions and tigers. 

This one: "Sergei Naidenko: The tiger is the largest representative of the feline family, along with the lion. The Amur tiger is one of the largest tiger subspecies. We used to capture animals weighing 212 kilogrammes. However, an adult male may weigh up to 250 kilogrammes."

So another tiger expert and even from Russia, when talking about one of their iconic species, puts tigers at approximately same level with lions in size.

It has been interesting to see how it has changed with time. A few decades ago tigers were considered to be clearly bigger than lions, then with time and more and more real and accurate information that difference started to get smaller and smaller, when looking what was found out in real research. Nowadays it looks like, that many experts aren´t too sure what kind of real difference there is, if at all in overall size/weight. 

When I was younger and preferred tigers over other animals, I remember how I found it annoying to read such thoughts. Nowadays, when I don´t have such favorites really, it has been just interesting to follow up, how things develop. For me it looks like, that tigers have had maybe exaggerated reputation based on some old and very questionable hunting records, which are vague and nowadays questioned by many people. None of those wouldn´t be taken seriously in these days without very hard evidence and real documentation. I personally have found out, that in my thoughts I just can´t take seriously those old claims anymore. Gap to reliable information is simply too big.

All in all, it will be interesting to see what kind of information can be found in future about these iconic biggest cats of the world, tigers and lions. Then again, a few kilos here or there isn´t really so important, just in some way interesting to certain point. Differences and similarities in behavior are much more interesting, imo. Reply