Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos

[GuateGojira]

(06-30-2022, 07:39 PM)Jerricson Wrote: @GuateGojira , I've mailed Dr. Ravi Chellam recently regarding the 160-190 kg range corroborated in the book, 'Wild Cats' published by Nowell and Jackson . I specifically enquired him regarding 3 aspects and I'll quote his words below :

1. Regarding the individual lion weights of that sample -

Quote:I do not have access to my field notes now. This was based on the animals we had tranquilised for radio collaring between 1987-88.

2. Regarding the gut fill - 

Quote:These were wild free-ranging lions. None of them were fully fed nor were any starving. I had no way of esstimating the amount of food that was still in each of their systems.

3. Regarding any more lions he's weighed apart from the ones published in the book 'Wild Cats'-

Quote:In total I weighed three adult males 4 independent times and 3 adult females and one sub-adult male.

I'm pretty disappointed that we didn't get any new weights but he has mentioned that only 3 adult males were weighed and in the original source , the sample size is quoted as 4 . So I'm guessing one of the males might've been captured twice. Let me know what you think.

Good information, thank you for sharing it. You are right, he mention 3 males (in 4 captures) and 3 females. Now, let's corroborate what Nowell & Jackson (1996) said in this composite image of the two chapters:

*This image is copyright of its original author

It is weird that the information do not match with the females, but this is because that book had errors, although it is understandable as they managed a huge amount of information. At the end, we will never know which was the weight of the other male and the second capture of one of the other males. For females, we also know only two, as that is what the document mention.

About the stomach content, I have more information, check this from Jonhsingh (2006):

*This image is copyright of its original author

While this doesn't mean that all the captured lions had up to 30 kg of stomach content, it clearly mention that some of those males did had some stomach content included in the body mass recorded. Reply