WildFact
›
Information Section
›
Terrestrial Wild Animals
›
Wild Cats
Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences
Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences
|
Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences
|
@
Quote:Leopards and jaguars have the same morphology while buffaloes and rhinos don't. Leopards and jaguars do not have the same morphology, two animals can be closely related and belong to the same genus while simultaneously developing different morphological traits in accordance with the environment they live in. It is a scientific consensus that jaguars are much more stocky, thick-bodied and larger than leopards in the species level. Even at weight parity, the morphological differences in terms of body build remain constant. Seymour even touched this point in his jaguar essay:  *This image is copyright of its original author Every other scientific organization, including Panthera, acknowledged these differences. This is not going to change because you desperately want to equalize them in terms of body composition. The jaguar is built for an amphibious lifestyle, predating armourous animals that require a powerful bite to dispatch, hence why their skulls are so wide in the zygomatic arches and their forehead is so pronounced. There adaptations that do not occur in the leopard, which is a more gracious and slender build felid that predominantly feeds on ungulates who prefers to avoid crossing bodies of water as much as possible. The skull of the leopard is more similar to the lion as it is relatively elongated with narrower jaws. Jaguars and tigers are the opposite of this. Quote:No 'we' don't. Almost half of the following Persian male leopards weighed more than in the 80kg:  *This image is copyright of its original author This table and your understanding of it are flawed. To begin with, the 115 kg Persian leopard has already been clarified as being 95 kg by the Persian Leopard Project, there has never been any 115 kg leopard, which is why such weight was dismissed when the average for leopards was being calculated by the researches who wrote the article on them. Furthermore, there aren't "half of them" weighing 80 kg, the table is giving ranges of weights and placing individuals in it, so you have a category that says 80-85 in which leopards that weighed 80 kg had previously been counted in the 75-80 range, and the one who weighed 85-90 already include the ones from the previous table of 80 kg. If you read the numbers correctly the table includes 5 individuals between the weights of 80-90 kg, a far cry from being half of them. Quote:Can you show me a sample of jaguars were a similar amount of individuals weigh above 140kg? No you can't, you can only show exceptional indiviuals. The sample for jaguars all across their range that surpass 140 kg include 5 animals on reliable records and 6 barring a 159 kg claimed jaguar hunted in the Venezuelan Llanos which is quoted in scientific literature:  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:What's a decent sized Pantanal male jaguar? An average 100kg one or a big 120kg one? Because we both know very large male leopards can attain the size of an average Pantanal male jaguar in both skull and mass. The average weight for a Pantanal jaguar is closer to your claim of a "big one" and far from 100 kg. This is can be easily proven by the fact that most of the recent captures for Pantanal jaguars involve males of above 110 and 115 kg, averages work when you see the pattern and frequency in how often an animal in a specific population is able to reach a specific weight. When almost every single adult male jaguar from the Pantanal captured in recent times is above 100 kg, the claim that their average is 100 kg is unfounded and ignorant. The weights for Almeida belong to a completely different time under different environmental constraints and hunting pressure for the jaguars. Those measurements become outdated when actual biological organizations such as Panthera or Oncafari are doing work directly with these jaguars and providing updated data. The only reason you ignore this fact is that it's convenient for you to try to hold onto any value that will place these jaguars closer to the lesser size of leopards. Almeida's weights are so outdated that they give the false impression that Llanos jaguars are larger than Pantanal jaguars when we have already had Panthera biologists like Hoogesteijn and Ricardo Ortiz who have clarified that it's the other way around. Quote:No you all base your view of Pantanal jaguar's weights on Instagram posts and collect all the numbers so you can create a table yourself. It doesn't work that way. Those organizations do not publish every single one. They tend to stick with the large ones which creates more attention. For every big jaguar they capture, there are 2 smaller ones roaming there, not captured. If by "all you" you mean those of us who have gone out of our way to contact the people on the ground who are capturing and collecting data on these jaguars, such as Hoogesteijn, Crashaw, Fragoso, Ortiz, among others, then you are either clueless of the work that they do to provide the information that they do, or as usual you are purposely misrepresenting the people who provide the data that makes your equalization of leopards to jaguars indirectly more unfounded. Just to inform you, the weights provided in the table come directly from each of the specific captures by Oncafari, universities, and the ones given by the biologists who directly captured the jaguars, so it is a mixture of primary and secondary sources, not "Instagram posts" as you ignorantly described. In fact, the weights provided by Furtado that @Dark Jaguar shared to include in the table are weights already published as scientific literature. Your last points trying to discredit these organizations couldn't be more lazy and incorrect, huge jaguars like Fantasma or Houdini were never captured by Oncafari, despite representing some of the largest males ever witnessed. Oncafari only captures the jaguars that happen to fall into their baits, there is no "selective" conspiracy to choose the largest specimens and publish their information at expense of smaller ones. For every big jaguar they have captured, there is another who matches their size or surpasses them, and if you insist claiming otherwise then show us some data to contradict that claim, otherwise your attempt at discrediting actual zoologists who are in the frontlines of jaguar ecology and conservation behind a computer screen will remain unfounded and desperate. Quote:Why not include all the other ones from Rafael Hoogesteijn? It's simply to raise the average because Rafael Hoogesteijn also states they average 95kg-100kg. This is a clear example that you have no idea of what you're talking about, Lopez was captured by Panthera, the organization from which Hoogesteijn works for, there are no jaguar weights released solely on his name and thus no other "Hoogesteijn" data to include (funny enough he did provide us with a 149 kg jaguar killed in the Venezuelan Llanos). So again, you keep making false accusations. Quote:I do not pay attention to the 67kg Persian leopard average because they simply collected data from all over Iran and they had around 20 males who indeed averaged 67kg but you know those in the North are larger because of different habitat. This made 0 sense, first of all, you don't pay attention to the one recent average for Persian leopards because they are inclusive of their entire range and not just the northern part of Central Asia? Scientists who don't have an agenda have a duty to provide the best and most accurate data, as such they release all the data from all the reliable weights gathered for this specific population. Northern or Southern Iran bears no relevance on the weight average for the population as a whole. The full table with the weight ranges is here:  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:I do know the ratio more or less because jaguars have wide skulls for their size compared to leopards who usually have long skulls but not wide per se. When you look at the measurements of male jaguars you get pretty much the same ratio: Again, this is wrong. You are comparing individual skulls against a population average, so you are purposely cherry-picking the largest skulls you could find for the leopards and comparing its relatively long measurements proportional to the animal's mass to that of the average gathered for multiple jaguars. The funny part is that even then the jaguars showed significantly larger values, with the smallest populations comparing to that of the leopards, even when the leopards will have longer skulls in proportion to their mass and jaguars will have shorter ones. The difference in the breadth of the skulls is even more pronounce and not even a point of comparison. And let me remind you once again that skull size is not an accurate indicator of the mass of an animal when comparing two very different animals with very different proportions. If you have an issue with the gathering of data, then feel free to come forward with data that proves to the contrary. If you can't and simply dislike the weights that are coming directly from the organizations mentioned before, I advise you to write them an email or a letter expressing your disagreement with the weights that they themselves gathered first-hand. Don't be mad at us for resharing said data here, the reality that jaguars and leopards belong in two completely different realms of size and weight, this remains constant regardless of how much cherry-picking of purpose misinterpretation of data you attempt to make. The previous statement is shared by every single felid biologist and is not even a point of discussion of debate, unlike let's say lion and tiger sizes. I suggest you accept to come to terms with this and stop trying to make the same comments constantly every other week. |
| Users browsing this thread: |
| 2 Guest(s) |