Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences

[Pckts]

The massive Male Jaguar Joker compared to a Male and Female Lion

Credit to @Balam 

*This image is copyright of its original author

I'll add her quotes as I agree with what is stated

"Joker’s measurements in regards to chest circumference, neck girth, head girth, and body length all put him in the same ballpark of an extremely large lioness or tigress, or a modest-to-average size male lion or tiger. His chest circumference of 128 cm during his second capture is particularly mind-blowing as it surpasses that of many adult male lions. Attached is an image of a chart of weights and chest circumference for lions in multiple populations of Africa gathered by G. L. Smut from his 1980 study: Comparative growth of wild male and female lions (Panthera led).

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As can be seen, during his second capture, Joker matched the chest circumference of the male lion in the ALPRU table at 128 cm and surpassed the chest circumference of the maximum recorded measurements for male lions in Kalahari and East Africa from Smuts’ samples. Granted, East Africa is a huge geographical area and the sample size from Smuts is rather small at only 8, undoubtedly there must be male lions with much larger measurements, particularly around the Serengeti and most notably the Ngorongoro crater. Craig Packer, a leading American biologist who studies and participated in captures of lions in the Ngorongoro crater, provided through personal communication the range of chest circumference for lions in that area as being 127-134 cm. This would mean that Joker would at least slightly surpass the circumference of the smallest lion in Packer’s sample while being greatly outsized by the largest specimen. An extremely impressive feat.

Joker’s body length of 180 cm, with a total length of 255 cm, surpasses the body length of the adult lioness in the ALPRU data just slightly and is short of the 187 cm of the male lion; however, these are not apples to apples comparisons, as mentioned on the table, the lions from the ALPRU dataset were measured from the tip of the incisors as opposed from the tip of the nose as in the case of Joker. This means that the lions had more cm added to their length by including the incisors. In this case, the gap between Joker and the male lion in the table is reduced, though it would be impossible to know by how much. I believe around 3 cm should in theory be reasonable to deduct from the male lion’s measurement.

Lastly, we have two very interesting measurements, neck and head girth, the latter of which is an area in which jaguars excel particularly well proportionally compared to other felids thanks to their macrocephalic broad heads. To assess how well Joker compared with lions (I was unable to find this sort of data for tigers compiled in one study), for this we can use the AfriCat Hobatere Lion Research Project (AHLRP) from 2015 which took the measurements of lions from Namibia. Generally, this study is controversial because of the way in which the body length and shoulder heights of the captured lions were taken. It was over the curves of the body following every single line, which ended up greatly exaggerating their size. For this reason, ignore the measurements provided for these lions with the exception of the head and neck girth which are more reliably taken and can tentatively be used for the purpose of this comparison. The AfriCat data of body measurements and the data of sex of each individual can be seen here.

Based on AfriCat’s data, Joker had a head circumference greater than that of the adult male lion Tara (69 vs 78 cm) but lesser than that of the other lions in the study, both male and female, with the largest measurement from a lion being a whooping 94 cm. In terms of neck girth, Joker outsizes all the lionesses and matches the girth of the male lions Muna and Mansa, as well as surpassing the neck girth of all other male lions. We rely on the top neck circumference girth because that is the area of the body where the measurements of jaguars are taken as well.

The shoulder height provided for Joker on his last capture by the personal communication with the Onçafari biologist was 80 cm. However, we do not know if this value took into consideration the extended paw. In any case, this would be the one area of the body where Joker would fall greatly short of adult tigers and lions, as jaguars are morphologically much lower to the ground proportionally than all other big cats.

We will never know for sure how much Joker weighed at maximum and the only data we can rely on was the partial weight of 140 kg registered on the scale from his last capture. With that being said, his outstanding measurements point towards him being a Pleistocene-sized jaguar and easily the largest modern jaguar captured to date (Lopez’s measurements notwithstanding)." Reply