Book Review

[Dr Panthera]

(12-20-2015, 08:53 PM)Pckts Wrote: On a species level the tiger may be smaller but it also may not, here's why.....
How many Sumatran and Sunderban Tigers exist today, how many have been weighed and how does that number impact the far larger Tiger numbers as a whole? Between the sunderban and sumatran tiger population, how many are full grown adult males compared to Indo-Chinese, Amur and Bengal?
According to this study that @Shardul posted http://www.wii.gov.in/images//images/doc...s_2014.pdf the sunderbans has a tiger population between "62-96" tigers compared to the rest of India which has an estimated population of "2226" tigers and this is from 2014, 2015 yielded higher numbers than the last year.
Unless the sumatran tiger population is significantly higher  than all other sub species populace, I don't see how the average would drop soo much.


To my knowledge we have very few weights from Sumatran and Sunderban tiger populations, certainly not enough to even make a dent in the overall number. Not to mention, at least in sunderban, the tigers weighed usually were sick, malnourished or had become man eaters, I believe.  According to few who have seen them, they are actually quite big animals when in good health. Sumatrans are obviously the smallest bar none, but still, I know of very few weights for them as well.
Between the Sunderban and Sumatran Tigers, you are probably looking at a number that contributes to less than 10% of the entire Tiger population, so I highly doubt you would see a tiger average drop from lets say.... 190kg (amur, indo-chinese and bengal) to 160kg if you included the sumatran and sunderban tiger population.  
So while its nice to estimate, the numbers really hold no water outside of the verified weights we can go off of.

In terms of the 220-260kg number, that is where I think you see the biggest difference. The number of measured males for tigers is far less than lions yet the mark mentioned seems to be hit more often for the tiger.

I have seen a pair of Sunderban tigers male and female in an exhibit next to African lions and the male lions looked bigger than both tigers combined, even the lioness looked failry larger than the male tiger, the three males measured by Mukherjee and Mallick ( 120 kg, 95 kg, and 95kg) were in good health, the females measured by Barlow ( 72 kg and 75 kg) were in poor health, from the little information available we can say that Sunderban, Malaysian, and Sumatran tigers are quite small females 75-110 kg and males 72-148 kg. This small size is an adaptation to reflect the poor prey base.
Malaysian tigers (around 500) Sumatran tigers (600) and Sunderban (maximum 400) would form 30% at least of the estimated 5000 wild tigers that cling to survival . The skull size reviewed by Barlow showed Sunderban tigers be likely smaller than Sumatran.
For Indo-Chinese tigers the data is even more scarce...three captive males were 110,150,and 170 kg, a young wild male was 157 kg and Dr.Rabinowitz estimates large males to be under 180kg, they too suffer from the depletion of large prey and Muntjac and wild boar form their main prey items, in the Western Complex Forest in Thailand large bovids and sambar still exist and this gives hope that larger tigers are able of existing and breeding and hopefully repopulate their lost range.
Recent data for Bengal tigers is also limited, not one sample over twenty , and as far as I could tell it was all for territorial males I only know of one transient adult male and one sub-adult.
The best data we have is for Amur tigers, Kruger lions, and Serengeti lions where decade long studies have produced large and reliable data, other populations still need a lot of work Reply