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Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos

GuateGojira Offline
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(10-14-2019, 11:41 PM)lionjaguar Wrote: I was referring to lions lived in only in central India. Asiatic lions lived in the central India weighed 177 kg?
Craig Packers and Minnesota University's lion researchers believe lions will most likely dominate in the region since he believes lion is experiencing more fighting experiences. I disagree with them, my opinion is their social lifestyle.

I think there is more than overhunting of the species. It is true that lions were gone in India due to overhunting by British and Indian royals. My statement was lions lived in Middle East, Iran to Turkey or Sinai Peninsula.

With only two lions recorded in Central India, will be highly unreliable to estimate an average. The figure of 255 kg from 1623 is still in doubt and Jahangir, which killed many lions, clearly said that he noted that "in his entire hunting career he had not come cross such a large, magnificent, or well proportionated animal" (Divyabhanusinh, 2005), which shows that it was an exceptional specimen. The male of 222 kg (estimated at c.240 kg with its entrails) will be big but not exceptional compared with the tigers in the area or the lions in Africa. So, based in the avialable data, we can't conclude that they were larger than the tigers, and in fact about the same size than some African populations.

I have not saw any statement of Dr Craig Packer saying that the lions will dominate for fighting experiencies in India. I think that you are tryign to bring the "lion vs tiger" issue here, and that will be VERY SILLY.

All the lions in the entire Asian area were overhunted, there is no mystery. Besides, the populations in the desertic areas were probably not as high as we may thinkg. In fact, the reason why the old tales speak of lion attacks may be explained by the fact that lions lived near the human settelments searching for food in arid areas.  So, no big mystery at the end, just human intervention and probably also climate change, we can't exclude it.
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lionjaguar Offline
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( This post was last modified: 10-15-2019, 01:58 AM by lionjaguar )

(10-15-2019, 12:04 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:
(10-14-2019, 11:41 PM)lionjaguar Wrote: I was referring to lions lived in only in central India. Asiatic lions lived in the central India weighed 177 kg?
Craig Packers and Minnesota University's lion researchers believe lions will most likely dominate in the region since he believes lion is experiencing more fighting experiences. I disagree with them, my opinion is their social lifestyle.

I think there is more than overhunting of the species. It is true that lions were gone in India due to overhunting by British and Indian royals. My statement was lions lived in Middle East, Iran to Turkey or Sinai Peninsula.

With only two lions recorded in Central India, will be highly unreliable to estimate an average. The figure of 255 kg from 1623 is still in doubt and Jahangir, which killed many lions, clearly said that he noted that "in his entire hunting career he had not come cross such a large, magnificent, or well proportionated animal" (Divyabhanusinh, 2005), which shows that it was an exceptional specimen. The male of 222 kg (estimated at c.240 kg with its entrails) will be big but not exceptional compared with the lions in Africa. So, based in the avialable data, we can't conclude about the same size than some African populations.

I have not saw any statement of Dr Craig Packer saying that the lions will dominate for fighting experiencies in India. 

All the lions in the entire Asian area were overhunted, there is no mystery. Besides, the populations in the desertic areas were probably not as high as we may thinkg. In fact, the reason why the old tales speak of lion attacks may be explained by the fact that lions lived near the human settelments searching for food in arid areas.  So, no big mystery at the end, just human intervention and probably also climate change, we can't exclude it.

The lion killed by Jahangir, wasn't it 647.6 lbs? You only have one available data besides lions of Jahangir? We won't know if the central Indian lions were the same size as today's Asiatic lion or African lion.

I am not bring up that silly topic. I said the dominant and outcome of competition in wild. Dr Craig Packer or his fallow researchers definitely said it if you look up their websites.
Climate change. Yes, that was the answer I was looking for. Problem is there is no written records of how did lions go extinct in the Middle East. Middle East is not always desert areas. My grandma was from swampy areas of the Middle East.
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GuateGojira Offline
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(10-15-2019, 01:57 AM)lionjaguar Wrote: The lion killed by Jahangir, wasn't it 647.6 lbs? You only have one available data besides lions of Jahangir? We won't know if the central Indian lions were the same size as today's Asiatic lion or African lion.

I am not bring up that silly topic. I said the dominant and outcome of competition in wild. Dr Craig Packer or his fallow researchers definitely said it if you look up their websites.
Climate change. Yes, that was the answer I was looking for. Problem is there is no written records of how did lions go extinct in the Middle East. Middle East is not always desert areas. My grandma was from swampy areas of the Middle East.

The lion of Jahangir was of eight and a half Jahangiri maunds or 255 kilograms (1 Jahangir maund = 30.10 kilograms), this is stated by Divyabhanusinh (2005), argubliy the best sources for information on the Asian lion (not only India). 

About weights, we can speculate if you want, but base on the pictures, I will dare to say that the lions from that area were as large as any lion in these days. Please you need to understand that I am not saying that ALL the lions in that area weighed 250 kg, by no means. They were probably like any average lion at about 170-180 kg but certainly they were smaller than the tigers that same area. Skull wise, again the information is limited but suggest smaller sizes than tigers and similar to the present lions in West Africa and, of course, Gir. But I guess that is a matter of interpretation.


About competition, there are many factors that affect, I already quoted the conclusion of the experts about the relation of these cats in India.

I did not say that ALL middle east was a desert, I said "in the desert areas". Please read again.
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lionjaguar Offline
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(10-15-2019, 02:26 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:
(10-15-2019, 01:57 AM)lionjaguar Wrote: The lion killed by Jahangir, wasn't it 647.6 lbs? You only have one available data besides lions of Jahangir? We won't know if the central Indian lions were the same size as today's Asiatic lion or African lion.

I am not bring up that silly topic. I said the dominant and outcome of competition in wild. Dr Craig Packer or his fallow researchers definitely said it if you look up their websites.
Climate change. Yes, that was the answer I was looking for. Problem is there is no written records of how did lions go extinct in the Middle East. Middle East is not always desert areas. My grandma was from swampy areas of the Middle East.

The lion of Jahangir was of eight and a half Jahangiri maunds or 255 kilograms (1 Jahangir maund = 30.10 kilograms), this is stated by Divyabhanusinh (2005), argubliy the best sources for information on the Asian lion (not only India). 

About weights, we can speculate if you want, but base on the pictures, I will dare to say that the lions from that area were as large as any lion in these days. Please you need to understand that I am not saying that ALL the lions in that area weighed 250 kg, by no means. They were probably like any average lion at about 170-180 kg and similar to the present lions in West Africa and, of course, Gir. But I guess that is a matter of interpretation.


About competition, there are many factors that affect, I already quoted the conclusion of the experts about the relation of these cats in India.

Divyabhanusinh ever written about lions in the central India and how did they go extinct in the Middle East? In the end, your conclusion on lions lived in the central India is just an opinion. No one will ever know. We could guess that they were bigger than Gir's lions since it had larger prey.
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GuateGojira Offline
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(10-15-2019, 02:33 AM)lionjaguar Wrote: Divyabhanusinh ever written about lions in the central India and how did they go extinct in the Middle East? In the end, your conclusion on lions lived in the central India is just an opinion. No one will ever know. We could guess that they were bigger than Gir's lions since it had larger prey.

That is also an opinion, guessing that the lions in Central India were larger just for prey base. 

About Divyabhanusinh, he just mention that hunting was the reason, he don't go into details but the information that he used is very especific. Also the book of Valmik Thapar "Exotic Aliens" is a good source, and although his conclution that lions at India came from Mozambique is completelly incorrect, is a good source about all the hunting records and how the lion vanished from many parts of India.
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lionjaguar Offline
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(10-15-2019, 02:37 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:
(10-15-2019, 02:33 AM)lionjaguar Wrote: Divyabhanusinh ever written about lions in the central India and how did they go extinct in the Middle East? In the end, your conclusion on lions lived in the central India is just an opinion. No one will ever know. We could guess that they were bigger than Gir's lions since it had larger prey.

About Divyabhanusinh, he just mention that hunting was the reason, he don't go into details but the information that he used is very especific. Also the book of Valmik Thapar "Exotic Aliens" is a good source, and although his conclution that lions at India came from Mozambique is completelly incorrect, is a good source about all the hunting records and how the lion vanished from many parts of India.

My biggest question was why did the lion die out in the Middle East. My Moroccan friend said Barbary lions were extinct by French military during the 19th century. I believe lions would still have gone extinct even if they survived in North Africa. I think the case of the Middle East was more complex.
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Rishi Offline
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( This post was last modified: 10-15-2019, 10:33 AM by Rishi )

(10-14-2019, 11:41 PM)lionjaguar Wrote: I think there is more than overhunting of the species. It is true that lions were gone in India due to overhunting by British and Indian royals. My statement was lions lived in Middle East, Iran to Turkey or Sinai Peninsula.

It's both over-hunting & habitat loss. Unlike Bengal tigers who held on to their forested hills, lions & Caspian tigers lost almost all of their plain's grassland/woodland to agriculture. In India, in Egypt, in most of Mesopotamia. Lions held on in India, but in Middle East & North-Africa there's mostly deserts outside the occasional fertile valleys & river basins. Deserts of Sahara or Sinai or Syria wouldn't sustain a vibrant lion population & they went regionally extinct easily over the ages.
Source: The Impact of Land Cover and Land Use Change on the Indian Monsoon Region Hydroclimate

*This image is copyright of its original author

Then that whole area between India & Libya has historically been the largest stretch of land with most human interference. It has been world's largest cradle of civilisation & has seen most wars, empires, trade, invasions, genocides, migrations etc. Lion numbers fell gradually over last 2-4 centuries with rise in use of gunpowder weapons since 1500s.


Compared to that sub-Saharan Africa's lions had it way easier, in the remote habitat of their sparsely populated continent facing minimal threat from civilisation until mid-19th century.
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( This post was last modified: 10-15-2019, 11:11 AM by BorneanTiger )

(09-03-2019, 11:33 AM)BorneanTiger Wrote:
(09-03-2019, 06:11 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: Body size of Indian lion - modern records:

For many years we tried to get good information about the size of the Indian lion (Panthera leo persica), the last population of the Asiatic/Barbary lions, and that now share the status of subspecies togheter with the West African lions as Panthera leo leo.

For several years we had only the information from Nowell & Jackson (1996) which provided the ranges of the weights of 6 adult lions captured by Dr Ravi Chellam in his studies of 1994, there were 4 males that ranged between 160 to 190 kg and 2 females that weighed 110 and 120 kg respectivelly. They quote that the longest lion measured 292 cm according with Sinha (1987).

After that, I manage to collect all the available sizes of Indian lions from several sources, all of them measured between pegs, and I created this table and these images:

*This image is copyright of its original author


*This image is copyright of its original author


*This image is copyright of its original author


However, we still lacked the weights of 2 of the four males from Dr Chellam, which by the way, were baited and includes some stomach content. However, the weights matched those of the lions captured in West Africa.

Latter, an email arise in this forum, about weights of Indian lions:

*This image is copyright of its original author


I guessed that those weights were real and I decided to update my table, but for lack of time is still in my list. 

However, surfing the web I found this document thatn changed all: "Asiatic Lion: Ecology, Economics, and Politics of Conservation" - Yadvendradev V. Jhala et al. (2019).
Link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....y-material

This document not only have one of the most compreensive summary of information about the Indian lion in modern and old history, but also is the FIRST document, as far I know, that actually have the body measurements and weights from adult Indian lions!!! So, here is the information:

*This image is copyright of its original author


*This image is copyright of its original author

I think that this is more than enough to see that Indian lions are long but not as heavy as some people calculate based in pictures. Measurements were taken "along the curves", but I suspect that they pressed the tape like with the Amur tigers, as a lion with a head-body length of 204 cm (M6) weighs only 160 kg. Compare these measurements with those taken "between pegs" in my table.

Interesting as it is, this documents provides much more information about this animal, and I think that many people here will be happy to discuss it and to learn more about this incredible animal, a relic from a past that no longer exist.


Greetings to all!

One thing that these lions definitely have in common with Northern tigers (Caspian and Siberian tigers put together genetically) is that they suffered a massive reduction in number and habitat (which they partly shared), so just as the Amur tiger is what remains of the Northern race of tigers to have its weight reliably measured, the Gujarati lion is what remains of the Asiatic population of lions to have its weight reliably measured. As for the extinct lions and tigers of Iran and elsewhere, what we have left are photos, pictures, skins or stuffed bodies kept in museums, like that of Shirea, an Iranian lioness brought to Dublin by King Edward VII in 1902, during the reign of Shah Mozaffar Ad-Din of the Qajari dynasty of Persia, and kept in the Natural History Museum of Ireland:

*This image is copyright of its original author


Men with a changed lion in Iran, circa 1880, by Antoin Sevruguin:

*This image is copyright of its original author


2 heads of tigers (I assume Bengal tigers) placed next to a stuffed lion (mistakenly called a 'tiger') in Bahawalpur Zoo in Pakistan, and it appears that the lion and tiger did occur in the area of Bahawalpur in the past, see the works of Kinnear (1920) and Nowell and Jackson (1996, referencing Roberts (1977)): 







Also, @Rishi earlier posted photos of stuffed lions in a museum in Jerusalem, from Dr Norman-Khalaf and Haaretz.

As mentioned here, I discovered something about Eram Zoo in Tehran, where Iran brought a pair of Indian lions from Europe in a bid to reintroduce Asiatic lions. The zoo was founded in the 19th century by the Qajari Shah Naser Ad-Din, who had a collection of 4 male and female Persian lions from the Zagros Mountains near Shiraz, besides other animals, judging by this Farsi website of Animal Rights Watch. And I'd like to mention that Naser Ad-Din was the predecessor of Mozaffar Ad-Din, during whose reign Britain's King Edward VII brought Shirea the Persian lioness to Dublin in 1902.
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Rishi Offline
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( This post was last modified: 10-17-2019, 08:55 AM by Rishi )

134 booked for illegal lion shows in 4 years 
Ahmedabad Mirror

Local television journalist, his cameraman and four others were arrested for illegally entering Gir forest, Junagadh range, chasing Asiatic lions and filming them on 25th August.

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As many as 40 offences of conducting illegal lion shows in Gir National Park have been registered against 134 individuals in last four years, the state forest department stated in its action taken report (ATR) submitted to the Gujarat High Court. Trial against 44 offenders in 10 cases has already begun in the trial court, the report added.
The report was submitted by Jayan Patel, assistant conservator of forest, Wildlife Circle-Junagadh, in HC during the hearing of a suo motu petition over unnatural deaths in Gir sanctuary area in Saurashtra. The court has appointed advocate Hemang Shah as amicus curiae to look into the issue. During the previous hearing, he had submitted a series of suggestions to prevent unnatural deaths of lions.

As per the forest department's report, the highest number of offences in these four years, 16, was registered in 2017-18. It stated that the lions are being radio-collared and forest department monitors their movement through drone camera and e-eye. However, it also stated that radio collaring is not a feasible option as it does not show the exact movement of lions and there are also issues of battery life.

The report further pointed out at huge vacancy of ground staff-posts of 272 beat guards, 91 foresters and 24 RFOs are vacant. Regarding open wells, the ATR stated that a massive drive was carried out to make farmers aware of the importance of covering their wells. Meanwhile, disbursement of subsidy amount of Rs 16,000 has been expedited.
At present, walls have been constructed around 37,201 wells. The work of chain-link fencing most length of the railway tracks is also on.


https://ahmedabadmirror.indiatimes.com/a...849633.cms
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Rishi Offline
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( This post was last modified: 10-17-2019, 05:16 PM by Rishi )

©Mantraraj Photography
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©Kuzhaloviyam
A lioness need not roar to keep the crowd in awe.
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Life Doesn't come with a Manual, It comes with Mom.
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Source: Natureinfocus
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Relaxed and easy going video.




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lionjaguar Offline
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(10-15-2019, 12:04 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: With only two lions recorded in Central India, will be highly unreliable to estimate an average. The figure of 255 kg from 1623 is still in doubt and Jahangir, which killed many lions, clearly said that he noted that "in his entire hunting career he had not come cross such a large, magnificent, or well proportionated animal" (Divyabhanusinh, 2005), which shows that it was an exceptional specimen. The male of 222 kg (estimated at c.240 kg with its entrails) will be big but not exceptional compared with the tigers in the area or the lions in Africa. So, based in the avialable data, we can't conclude that they were larger than the tigers, and in fact about the same size than some African populations.


All the lions in the entire Asian area were overhunted, there is no mystery. Besides, the populations in the desertic areas were probably not as high as we may thinkg. In fact, the reason why the old tales speak of lion attacks may be explained by the fact that lions lived near the human settelments searching for food in arid areas.  So, no big mystery at the end, just human intervention and probably also climate change, we can't exclude it.

You were saying that Asiatic lions were smaller from measuring weight. How about comparing other measurements beisdes weight? Which one is bigger cats? Don't forget African lions, barbary lions and cape lions.
I heard lion is the second largest cats all the time.  I always notice that male lions looks bigger than other cats in sanctuary, circus, and zoo when they are next to other cats. Why lion is considered as the second biggest cat after lion looks bigger than any other cats. They are lighter in weight, and people are making them as the second biggest?
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GuateGojira Offline
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( This post was last modified: 10-21-2019, 09:21 PM by GuateGojira )

(10-18-2019, 11:38 PM)lionjaguar Wrote: You were saying that Asiatic lions were smaller from measuring weight. How about comparing other measurements beisdes weight? Which one is bigger cats? Don't forget African lions, barbary lions and cape lions.
I heard lion is the second largest cats all the time.  I always notice that male lions looks bigger than other cats in sanctuary, circus, and zoo when they are next to other cats. Why lion is considered as the second biggest cat after lion looks bigger than any other cats. They are lighter in weight, and people are making them as the second biggest?

I allready explaned to you that the "length and height" measurements are important to get the size of an animal, but are problematic if you don't know the method used, which may be "between pegs" or "over curves" with its infinite forms of been taken.

Captive lions look bigger because of the mane, that is very common fact in captive animals, but if you look they body sizes lions are always smaller than Bengal and Amur tigers. Lions have longer heads and adding the effect of the mane, they look impresive at the side of any cat, but is just an illusion.

Lions are second to tigers because of both, body size and weight. Using only measurements "between pegs" or in "straight line", the Amur and Bengal tigers have a slight advantage in body length on average, although the biggest lions are also slightly taller. So like Dr Hunter (2015) says: "The Tiger is the world's largest cat by a small margin". Using measurements "along the curves" and specially the new method of ALPRU, the lions are of the same size or even longer, but those measurements are unreliable as do not show the true size of the animals. The best example are the Hobatere lions, which shows head-body lengths of over 240 cm, while the picture of the animals shows males of no more than 200 cm, maybe even less! 

So it is not just weight, is also body size. Check this old images that I have, you can see the diferences in body size, not only weight, between the largest tiger populations and all the lion populations as a hole.

*This image is copyright of its original author


*This image is copyright of its original author


*This image is copyright of its original author


There is some information that need to be updated, for example, I think that the lions from Southwest Africa are slightly heavier because of new weigthts published, but the measurements do not change.
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