Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences

[Luipaard]

Quote:it's been brought to my attention that you have been mentioning me and the work that we've done in this forum in data collection for jaguars in the Carnivora site, so I'm gonna answer your post on here and go over each individual lie/misrepresentation you continue to say in your quest for placing jaguars and leopards in the same size and weight class.

Wait so you decided to move over a discussion from another forum? A discussion you're not even involved in? Is it because you're banned on that forum because of misbehaviour? You know, you insulted many people over there, calling some mentally unstable, an embarrassing fanboy, delusional, ... The list goes on except when you post here isn't it? For Wildfact you use a quite different vocabulary, one that doesn't result in getting banned.

Quote: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:

Wrong, all big cats have the same morphology except for their characteristics (lions having a mane, leopards a dewlap, tigers a ruff, ...). They all have the same build under their skin. 

Quote: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.

Wrong:

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Quote: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.

Remember why Central African leopard have larger skulls (i.e. longer AND wider)? I got in touch with Philipp Henschel because I was curious why exactly they such large skulls compared to other leopard populations (excluding Persian leopards). Here's what he had to say:

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As you can see, Gabonese leopards are known to predate on armourous animals (that require a powerful bite to dispatch) as well. Not all leopards have the same lifestyle, i.e. not all leopards predate upon impala's.

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Quote: Wrote:No 'we' don't. Almost half of the following Persian male leopards weighed more than in the 80kg:

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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.

First of all, you keeo claiming they dismissed the 115kg weight number but I still haven't seen a source. Also Iman Memarian himself stated him being around 100kg. He's the wildlife veterinarian who weighed the leopard:

https://www.facebook.com/Iman.Memarian/media_set?set=a.3799844411189&type=3
https://www.facebook.com/Iman.Memarian/media_set?set=a.3823002710132&type=3

And while they somehow dismiss the leopard, they still claim him to be the largest ever recorded:

"We excluded an adult male from Tonekabon (northern Iran) with an exceptional weight of 115 kg (I. Memarian, pers. comm.) which is the heaviest specimen ever recorded across the species’ global range" (link)

And no you're wrong regarding the weight ranges. If a weight range contains 3 animals, it really means those 3 fall into that weight range so they weigh anything in between that.

Look closely:

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There were 21 adult males and 6 adult females, 3 sub-adult males and 3 sub-adult males. Those weights were then put into that chart to give everyone a better summary:

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And if you think of it, if they would've included the 115kg one, the average 66kg would've increased as well.

Quote: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:

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That's what I thought. 'Reliable' and 'claimed' ones.

Quote: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.

The thing is that you gather weights from all sort of sources, including Instgram posts. You then put them in a table and come to the conclusion they average *insert weight*. That's not how it works.

Quote: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:

First of all, the 66kg average number is currently regarded as an average for the whole subspecies while it's an average from data they gather from across Iran. It's not an average of a population. Ignoring the fact that they do in fact grow larger up North won't change that. Also, all the larger Persian skulls originate from these regions. The 115kg or 95kg in your case too originated from upper Iran.

Quote: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.

Exactly, that's what the skull ratio part of the discussion was all about. Also, both were population averages, no individual skulls or whatsoever.

Quote: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.

How am I mad? Who's the one who decides to reply here? I wasn't even discussing with you in the first place, in this case it happened to be Pckts but on another forum.

In the future I suggest you at least PM me rather than trying to lecture me. Reply