Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences

[Shadow]

(09-18-2020, 10:59 AM)Styx38 Wrote: @Shadow 

We do have some evidence of Leopard skull lengths being correlated with Leopard size. As in, the longer the skull the heavier the weight.



Here are a bunch of skull length measurements.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Here are body weight averages.

*This image is copyright of its original author

"Our skull data indicated that it is very rare to see female Leopards exceeding 210 mm in greatest skull length which is associated with 190-200 cm in condylobasal skull length, as used by Christiansen and Harris (2012), together with larger and thicker teeth and a well-developed sagittal crest, which is almost absent on most female skulls (only 1 among 14 female skulls in our sample had a well-developed crest).

There was some overlap on the scatterplot between adult female specimens and several smaller males"


    Farhadinia et. al. 2014. Patterns of sexual dimorphism in the Persian Leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor) and implications for sex differentiation


 9 males had a skull length of 250 mm or more and 9 males weighed 75-115kg.


 A Kenyan leopard shot with a 260 mm long skull, and weighed 78 kg:

*This image is copyright of its original author

So a good Leopard skull length will indicate a fairly large Leopards. 

Considering the Congo Basin had many decent length (and width) skulls, there may be an indication that there were likely many 70-80 kg as well as some 80+ kg Leopards. Possibly even a few 90 or 90+ kg specimens still lurking.

You are free to post these things as you did. My main point was, that people shouldn´t always be too eager to "win" some debate, when there are different kind of points of views and some debate is possible.

Making a good posting with good reasoning is something what people read willingly and for sure then thinking about it, that do they feel convinced or not. When someone disagrees and makes a good posting telling why, again people who are interested do read it and then they for sure compare those postings and things said. 

Naturally debates happen and nothing wrong in it, when people stay calm. Now we started to see first signs for emotions heating up. Same signs have been seen more than once before and usually leading to nothing good. 

I have no problem with that idea, that bigger skull probably means also big animal, it´s just logical thing to assume. It looks like that most problems in these comparing discussions occur, when talking about jaguars and leopards same time. I hope, that those problems could be solved in some reasonable way. Because I don´t think that anyone really disagrees with it, that jaguars are simply heavier in average. So it should be possible.

For sure there can be 80-90 kg leopards lurking in Congo Basin, question is maybe more about it, that how many really? Problem is in it, that not too much information yet. That´s why I said as my opinion, that possibly, because I haven´t ruled it out in my thoughts. This is one of those things, which can´t be at this point proven one way or another. So if there is disagreement, different "sides" can tell why they agree or disagree, but it´s pointless to wait for a clear "win". Reply