Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences

[Luipaard]

(06-26-2021, 12:25 AM)Pckts Wrote:

(06-25-2021, 10:22 PM)Luipaard Wrote: Leopards do not have 'completely different' skulls compared to jaguars. At all. At equal weights the leopard will have a longer skull and the jaguar skull will be wider. Despite this they completely overlap in length and width. The major difference will indeed be the forehead where the leopard has a convex nasal profile and the jaguar a concave nasal profile. 

Lateral view of a leopard skull and a jaguar skull:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Source: What is a Snow Leopard? Taxonomy, Morphology, and Phylogeny

Again I'm not seeing two entirely different skulls, just a bigger version of the other, similar to what you would see if you would compare let's say a lion skull to a jaguar skull.

Moving on to the two black panthers; based on what is Shazam, the leopard 80kg? First of all he isn't even close in size of Diablo Guapo, the jaguar. He looks as big because he's standing on a sand bank. These are your own words, you said this yourself on a different forum. Shazam looks like a 60kg-65kg male, really nothing special to be honest.

You don't notice any differences between these 2 skulls?


It's fairly easy to see differences in the nasal projection and bone above the orbital, the differences in the zygomatic arch, the Mandible height and shape as well as the sagital crest and auditory bullae.
You could put a Homosapien skull and Homoerectus skull side by side and they'd be "similar" but certainly not the same.
You have to look closely since we're still comparing Panthera's and all of their skulls will be similar to one another but certainly not the same.

But that's literally the whole point. The differences you mentoned are all because of the size difference e.g. mandible height, zygomatic arch. Being similar is far from being completely different. I wish we could compared two similar-sized skulls; the leopard skull would be longer whereas the jaguar skull would be wider. I guess the jaguar skull would be more robust too but overall? Quite similar unlike let's say a cougar skull which is in fact completely different in build and structure. Put a tiger, lion, jaguar and leopard skull of the same size next to each other and you would instantly notice they're all similar, even difficult to identify individually.

This claim of jaguar skulls being completely different than leopard skulls is just false. Reply