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Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences
Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences
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Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences
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 (09-03-2020, 11:03 AM)BorneanTiger Wrote: @Hello Panthera leo leo would refer to the Maghrebi (Northwest African) Barbary lion (or nowadays, the "Northern lion subspecies" that is considered to include the Barbary and Asiatic lions, as well as extant lions from northern parts of Africa, including West Africa), with Panthera leo melanochaita referring to the Cape lion of South Africa (or nowadays, the "Southern lion subspecies" that is considered to include the Cape lion, extant South African lions, and others lions in Southern and Southeastern Africa): https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...=y#page=71 Hi @BorneanTiger ,Thanks for the correction and for the info.
@BorneanTiger and @Shadow
There are certainly more and less robust lions, but I've never seen a male lion just straight up dominate a similarly sized prey like the tiger does in this video linked below. Are there any videos, pictures, or credible eyewitness accounts of something similar for lions? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=etz9jx1zvz0&t=11s (09-03-2020, 11:12 PM)parduscat Wrote: @BorneanTiger and @Shadow I´ve seen that video many times as have most of the people here. Use some time to look around here and you save a lot of your time before re-posting some old videos offering nothing new for people who are interested about lions and tigers. I wrote what I wrote fully aware of countless of youtube videos. That attack of the tiger was fierce, but it was also smallish looking domestic buffalo cow, not anything like gaurs of cape buffalos. I´ve seen many videos more impressive from lions and any kill of a gaur by a tiger is more impressive than the video which you shared, imo. You have your opinion, I have mine. All people have their own. And what comes to me and other... should I say "senior posters" here, those opinions are based on seeing countless video footages, reading descriptions from people who have seen or heard about something, seeing these animals close by (in zoos or in wild), and so on. There simply isn´t some single video proving something what comes to strength of these big cats. Every hunt is different kind, but killing some small animal naturally is way easier than killing a bigger one. So, you are free to have your opinion, but if you want to try to change mine with some old videos, save your time because I´ve seen those all. Something what people should learn to understand here and in other forums is, that about some things there simply isn´t enough clear information to prove it one way or another. I´m not interested to debate about this, because there have been more than enough debates leading to nowhere.
Nice Comparison.(Not mine)
 *This image is copyright of its original author
Rainforest Leopards are probably around the size of Kwala Zulu Natal Leopards or Persian Leopards depending on the area of the Congo Basin.
Leopards had a preference for Red River Hogs, and attacked adult Gorillas "The most important prey species in this study was the much larger red river hog," "For gorilla, the individuals consumed were adult in all three cases" source: Henschel et. al. 2005. Leopard food habits in the Lope National Park, Gabon, Central Africa So it seems Leopards can take on fair sized animals like Red River Hogs, and big and dangerous animals like adult Gorillas. Since some of the areas in the Congo basin are also a Forest-Savanna Mosaic, the Leopards also have access to large prey, like this Waterbuck.  *This image is copyright of its original author http://www.mammalwatching.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MD-Garamba-Mammal-Report-2017.pdf This is in Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo The Leopard looks to be at the same weight as many of the large Kruger males. Leopards will also have access to large animals like Eland Cows and Uganda Kob in these forest-savannas.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author source: Stuarts’ Field Guide to Tracks & Signs of Southern, Central & East African Wildlife by Chris Stuart, Mathilde Stuart So they may be at or rivaling South African Leopards if they attack Gorillas as well as large animals like Eland Cows. 
Leopards on the Right, Jaguars on the Left
 *This image is copyright of its original author
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Quote:Leopards and jaguars have the same morphology while buffaloes and rhinos don't. Leopards and jaguars do not have the same morphology, two animals can be closely related and belong to the same genus while simultaneously developing different morphological traits in accordance with the environment they live in. It is a scientific consensus that jaguars are much more stocky, thick-bodied and larger than leopards in the species level. Even at weight parity, the morphological differences in terms of body build remain constant. Seymour even touched this point in his jaguar essay:  *This image is copyright of its original author Every other scientific organization, including Panthera, acknowledged these differences. This is not going to change because you desperately want to equalize them in terms of body composition. The jaguar is built for an amphibious lifestyle, predating armourous animals that require a powerful bite to dispatch, hence why their skulls are so wide in the zygomatic arches and their forehead is so pronounced. There adaptations that do not occur in the leopard, which is a more gracious and slender build felid that predominantly feeds on ungulates who prefers to avoid crossing bodies of water as much as possible. The skull of the leopard is more similar to the lion as it is relatively elongated with narrower jaws. Jaguars and tigers are the opposite of this. Quote:No 'we' don't. Almost half of the following Persian male leopards weighed more than in the 80kg:  *This image is copyright of its original author This table and your understanding of it are flawed. To begin with, the 115 kg Persian leopard has already been clarified as being 95 kg by the Persian Leopard Project, there has never been any 115 kg leopard, which is why such weight was dismissed when the average for leopards was being calculated by the researches who wrote the article on them. Furthermore, there aren't "half of them" weighing 80 kg, the table is giving ranges of weights and placing individuals in it, so you have a category that says 80-85 in which leopards that weighed 80 kg had previously been counted in the 75-80 range, and the one who weighed 85-90 already include the ones from the previous table of 80 kg. If you read the numbers correctly the table includes 5 individuals between the weights of 80-90 kg, a far cry from being half of them. Quote:Can you show me a sample of jaguars were a similar amount of individuals weigh above 140kg? No you can't, you can only show exceptional indiviuals. The sample for jaguars all across their range that surpass 140 kg include 5 animals on reliable records and 6 barring a 159 kg claimed jaguar hunted in the Venezuelan Llanos which is quoted in scientific literature:  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:What's a decent sized Pantanal male jaguar? An average 100kg one or a big 120kg one? Because we both know very large male leopards can attain the size of an average Pantanal male jaguar in both skull and mass. The average weight for a Pantanal jaguar is closer to your claim of a "big one" and far from 100 kg. This is can be easily proven by the fact that most of the recent captures for Pantanal jaguars involve males of above 110 and 115 kg, averages work when you see the pattern and frequency in how often an animal in a specific population is able to reach a specific weight. When almost every single adult male jaguar from the Pantanal captured in recent times is above 100 kg, the claim that their average is 100 kg is unfounded and ignorant. The weights for Almeida belong to a completely different time under different environmental constraints and hunting pressure for the jaguars. Those measurements become outdated when actual biological organizations such as Panthera or Oncafari are doing work directly with these jaguars and providing updated data. The only reason you ignore this fact is that it's convenient for you to try to hold onto any value that will place these jaguars closer to the lesser size of leopards. Almeida's weights are so outdated that they give the false impression that Llanos jaguars are larger than Pantanal jaguars when we have already had Panthera biologists like Hoogesteijn and Ricardo Ortiz who have clarified that it's the other way around. Quote:No you all base your view of Pantanal jaguar's weights on Instagram posts and collect all the numbers so you can create a table yourself. It doesn't work that way. Those organizations do not publish every single one. They tend to stick with the large ones which creates more attention. For every big jaguar they capture, there are 2 smaller ones roaming there, not captured. If by "all you" you mean those of us who have gone out of our way to contact the people on the ground who are capturing and collecting data on these jaguars, such as Hoogesteijn, Crashaw, Fragoso, Ortiz, among others, then you are either clueless of the work that they do to provide the information that they do, or as usual you are purposely misrepresenting the people who provide the data that makes your equalization of leopards to jaguars indirectly more unfounded. Just to inform you, the weights provided in the table come directly from each of the specific captures by Oncafari, universities, and the ones given by the biologists who directly captured the jaguars, so it is a mixture of primary and secondary sources, not "Instagram posts" as you ignorantly described. In fact, the weights provided by Furtado that @Dark Jaguar shared to include in the table are weights already published as scientific literature. Your last points trying to discredit these organizations couldn't be more lazy and incorrect, huge jaguars like Fantasma or Houdini were never captured by Oncafari, despite representing some of the largest males ever witnessed. Oncafari only captures the jaguars that happen to fall into their baits, there is no "selective" conspiracy to choose the largest specimens and publish their information at expense of smaller ones. For every big jaguar they have captured, there is another who matches their size or surpasses them, and if you insist claiming otherwise then show us some data to contradict that claim, otherwise your attempt at discrediting actual zoologists who are in the frontlines of jaguar ecology and conservation behind a computer screen will remain unfounded and desperate. Quote:Why not include all the other ones from Rafael Hoogesteijn? It's simply to raise the average because Rafael Hoogesteijn also states they average 95kg-100kg. This is a clear example that you have no idea of what you're talking about, Lopez was captured by Panthera, the organization from which Hoogesteijn works for, there are no jaguar weights released solely on his name and thus no other "Hoogesteijn" data to include (funny enough he did provide us with a 149 kg jaguar killed in the Venezuelan Llanos). So again, you keep making false accusations. Quote:I do not pay attention to the 67kg Persian leopard average because they simply collected data from all over Iran and they had around 20 males who indeed averaged 67kg but you know those in the North are larger because of different habitat. This made 0 sense, first of all, you don't pay attention to the one recent average for Persian leopards because they are inclusive of their entire range and not just the northern part of Central Asia? Scientists who don't have an agenda have a duty to provide the best and most accurate data, as such they release all the data from all the reliable weights gathered for this specific population. Northern or Southern Iran bears no relevance on the weight average for the population as a whole. The full table with the weight ranges is here:  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:I do know the ratio more or less because jaguars have wide skulls for their size compared to leopards who usually have long skulls but not wide per se. When you look at the measurements of male jaguars you get pretty much the same ratio: Again, this is wrong. You are comparing individual skulls against a population average, so you are purposely cherry-picking the largest skulls you could find for the leopards and comparing its relatively long measurements proportional to the animal's mass to that of the average gathered for multiple jaguars. The funny part is that even then the jaguars showed significantly larger values, with the smallest populations comparing to that of the leopards, even when the leopards will have longer skulls in proportion to their mass and jaguars will have shorter ones. The difference in the breadth of the skulls is even more pronounce and not even a point of comparison. And let me remind you once again that skull size is not an accurate indicator of the mass of an animal when comparing two very different animals with very different proportions. If you have an issue with the gathering of data, then feel free to come forward with data that proves to the contrary. If you can't and simply dislike the weights that are coming directly from the organizations mentioned before, I advise you to write them an email or a letter expressing your disagreement with the weights that they themselves gathered first-hand. Don't be mad at us for resharing said data here, the reality that jaguars and leopards belong in two completely different realms of size and weight, this remains constant regardless of how much cherry-picking of purpose misinterpretation of data you attempt to make. The previous statement is shared by every single felid biologist and is not even a point of discussion of debate, unlike let's say lion and tiger sizes. I suggest you accept to come to terms with this and stop trying to make the same comments constantly every other week.  Quote:it's been brought to my attention that you have been mentioning me and the work that we've done in this forum in data collection for jaguars in the Carnivora site, so I'm gonna answer your post on here and go over each individual lie/misrepresentation you continue to say in your quest for placing jaguars and leopards in the same size and weight class. Wait so you decided to move over a discussion from another forum? A discussion you're not even involved in? Is it because you're banned on that forum because of misbehaviour? You know, you insulted many people over there, calling some mentally unstable, an embarrassing fanboy, delusional, ... The list goes on except when you post here isn't it? For Wildfact you use a quite different vocabulary, one that doesn't result in getting banned. Quote:Leopards and jaguars do not have the same morphology, two animals can be closely related and belong to the same genus while simultaneously developing different morphological traits in accordance with the environment they live in. It is a scientific consensus that jaguars are much more stocky, thick-bodied and larger than leopards in the species level. Even at weight parity, the morphological differences in terms of body build remain constant. Seymour even touched this point in his jaguar essay: Wrong, all big cats have the same morphology except for their characteristics (lions having a mane, leopards a dewlap, tigers a ruff, ...). They all have the same build under their skin. Quote:Every other scientific organization, including Panthera, acknowledged these differences. This is not going to change because you desperately want to equalize them in terms of body composition. Wrong:  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:The jaguar is built for an amphibious lifestyle, predating armourous animals that require a powerful bite to dispatch, hence why their skulls are so wide in the zygomatic arches and their forehead is so pronounced. There adaptations that do not occur in the leopard, which is a more gracious and slender build felid that predominantly feeds on ungulates who prefers to avoid crossing bodies of water as much as possible. The skull of the leopard is more similar to the lion as it is relatively elongated with narrower jaws. Jaguars and tigers are the opposite of this. Remember why Central African leopard have larger skulls (i.e. longer AND wider)? I got in touch with Philipp Henschel because I was curious why exactly they such large skulls compared to other leopard populations (excluding Persian leopards). Here's what he had to say:  *This image is copyright of its original author As you can see, Gabonese leopards are known to predate on armourous animals (that require a powerful bite to dispatch) as well. Not all leopards have the same lifestyle, i.e. not all leopards predate upon impala's. Quote:Quote: Wrote:No 'we' don't. Almost half of the following Persian male leopards weighed more than in the 80kg: First of all, you keeo claiming they dismissed the 115kg weight number but I still haven't seen a source. Also Iman Memarian himself stated him being around 100kg. He's the wildlife veterinarian who weighed the leopard: https://www.facebook.com/Iman.Memarian/media_set?set=a.3799844411189&type=3 https://www.facebook.com/Iman.Memarian/media_set?set=a.3823002710132&type=3 And while they somehow dismiss the leopard, they still claim him to be the largest ever recorded: "We excluded an adult male from Tonekabon (northern Iran) with an exceptional weight of 115 kg (I. Memarian, pers. comm.) which is the heaviest specimen ever recorded across the species’ global range" (link) And no you're wrong regarding the weight ranges. If a weight range contains 3 animals, it really means those 3 fall into that weight range so they weigh anything in between that. Look closely: *This image is copyright of its original author There were 21 adult males and 6 adult females, 3 sub-adult males and 3 sub-adult males. Those weights were then put into that chart to give everyone a better summary:  *This image is copyright of its original author And if you think of it, if they would've included the 115kg one, the average 66kg would've increased as well. Quote:The sample for jaguars all across their range that surpass 140 kg include 5 animals on reliable records and 6 barring a 159 kg claimed jaguar hunted in the Venezuelan Llanos which is quoted in scientific literature: That's what I thought. 'Reliable' and 'claimed' ones. Quote:The average weight for a Pantanal jaguar is closer to your claim of a "big one" and far from 100 kg. This is can be easily proven by the fact that most of the recent captures for Pantanal jaguars involve males of above 110 and 115 kg, averages work when you see the pattern and frequency in how often an animal in a specific population is able to reach a specific weight. When almost every single adult male jaguar from the Pantanal captured in recent times is above 100 kg, the claim that their average is 100 kg is unfounded and ignorant. The weights for Almeida belong to a completely different time under different environmental constraints and hunting pressure for the jaguars. Those measurements become outdated when actual biological organizations such as Panthera or Oncafari are doing work directly with these jaguars and providing updated data. The only reason you ignore this fact is that it's convenient for you to try to hold onto any value that will place these jaguars closer to the lesser size of leopards. Almeida's weights are so outdated that they give the false impression that Llanos jaguars are larger than Pantanal jaguars when we have already had Panthera biologists like Hoogesteijn and Ricardo Ortiz who have clarified that it's the other way around. The thing is that you gather weights from all sort of sources, including Instgram posts. You then put them in a table and come to the conclusion they average *insert weight*. That's not how it works. Quote:This made 0 sense, first of all, you don't pay attention to the one recent average for Persian leopards because they are inclusive of their entire range and not just the northern part of Central Asia? Scientists who don't have an agenda have a duty to provide the best and most accurate data, as such they release all the data from all the reliable weights gathered for this specific population. Northern or Southern Iran bears no relevance on the weight average for the population as a whole. The full table with the weight ranges is here: First of all, the 66kg average number is currently regarded as an average for the whole subspecies while it's an average from data they gather from across Iran. It's not an average of a population. Ignoring the fact that they do in fact grow larger up North won't change that. Also, all the larger Persian skulls originate from these regions. The 115kg or 95kg in your case too originated from upper Iran. Quote:Again, this is wrong. You are comparing individual skulls against a population average, so you are purposely cherry-picking the largest skulls you could find for the leopards and comparing its relatively long measurements proportional to the animal's mass to that of the average gathered for multiple jaguars. The funny part is that even then the jaguars showed significantly larger values, with the smallest populations comparing to that of the leopards, even when the leopards will have longer skulls in proportion to their mass and jaguars will have shorter ones. Exactly, that's what the skull ratio part of the discussion was all about. Also, both were population averages, no individual skulls or whatsoever. Quote:If you have an issue with the gathering of data, then feel free to come forward with data that proves to the contrary. If you can't and simply dislike the weights that are coming directly from the organizations mentioned before, I advise you to write them an email or a letter expressing your disagreement with the weights that they themselves gathered first-hand. Don't be mad at us for resharing said data here, the reality that jaguars and leopards belong in two completely different realms of size and weight, this remains constant regardless of how much cherry-picking of purpose misinterpretation of data you attempt to make. The previous statement is shared by every single felid biologist and is not even a point of discussion of debate, unlike let's say lion and tiger sizes. I suggest you accept to come to terms with this and stop trying to make the same comments constantly every other week. How am I mad? Who's the one who decides to reply here? I wasn't even discussing with you in the first place, in this case it happened to be Pckts but on another forum. In the future I suggest you at least PM me rather than trying to lecture me.
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Quote:Is it because you're banned on that forum because of misbehaviour? You know, you insulted many people over there, calling some mentally unstable, an embarrassing fanboy, delusional it's funny how on every single post you make you can't help but to twist what actually happened, in other words, you are a professional deceiver. Perhaps we should post in here the insults that Chui, whom you worship, threw at Pckts in that forum when he wasn't even active there. It's all based on ad-hominem, and let me remind that it was me who asked for the account to be banned as I find that forum to be of low-quality and discussions like these are better had in forums like this one with users who are more knowledgable than teenagers who are obsessed with animal matchups. Furthermore, the only reason why I'm acknowledging is because you kept mentioning me in your mindless rants, so someone made me aware of it. Moving on. Quote:Wrong, all big cats have the same morphology except for their characteristics (lions having a mane, leopards a dewlap, tigers a ruff, ...). They all have the same build under their skin. No, they do not. Morphology entails the body composition of an animal. A lion has more differences with a tiger beyond superficial traits such as the mane, in both their skeleton and muscle mass. In the case of jaguars and leopards, the difference is even more pronounced and any robusticity study done can and has proven this. And since you think all big cats are the same under the skin, I'm sure you wouldn't mind if somebody were to make the same equalization concerning leopards and cheetahs, do you? Quote:Wrong: The statement in that picture bears no relevance to the points being made, Pckts already told you that 2d frames do not represent an accurate representation of animal's body to assess its size and overall compare their differences, so even an expert can have a hard time discerning between species when the picture itself lacks the details of 3D view. And concerning Panthera, this is coming directly from them:  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:Remember why Central African leopard have larger skulls (i.e. longer AND wider)? I got in touch with Philipp Henschel because I was curious why exactly they such large skulls compared to other leopard populations (excluding Persian leopards). Here's what he had to say: And I love that the first thing he told you is that you cannot draw conclusions about the absolute size of an animal-based on their skull measurements and that their skull measurements might have developed independently from their size in that specific region. Add to the inclusion that the skull database for this leopards is limited, so even he agrees that drawing the arbitrary conclusions that they weight 110 kg as you've previously suggested is wrong. And as I've shown before the SCI records prove that the measurements gathered for leopards in the Congo have been matched or surpassed by savanna individuals and neither reached 90+ kg on an empty stomach. Quote:As you can see, Gabonese leopards are known to predate on armourous animals (that require a powerful bite to dispatch) as well. Not all leopards have the same lifestyle, i.e. not all leopards predate upon impala's. And yet the data that we have for their diet is plentiful and it shows that their preferred prey items are duikers, followed by tree porcupines. Predating on reptiles might be higher in terms of frequency due to the habitat in which they live, but even then the adaptations in their skulls do not match that of jaguars who as a species have specialized in predating on said amorous prey. And if you study the breadth of some skulls from the Congo you will see that their measurements sometimes end up being relatively slimmer in proportion to the skull length, which is the total opposite with jaguars. Quote:First of all, you keeo claiming they dismissed the 115kg weight number but I still haven't seen a source. The source was already posted here, so maybe get some glasses  *This image is copyright of its original author This is the same leopard quoted in the study that was dismissed as 115 kg. Quote:And while they somehow dismiss the leopard, they still claim him to be the largest ever recorded: It's the heaviest because a leopard of 100+ kg of weight has never been seen, and since the weight was inaccurate its inclusion in the table would've been erroneous, so they rightfully dismissed it. Quote:And no you're wrong regarding the weight ranges. If a weight range contains 3 animals, it really means those 3 fall into that weight range so they weigh anything in between that. When did I say it didn't? I'm showing the weight ranges that show the minimum and maximum values accepted for the species, and since the lowest value is 40 kg for an adult male, the weights for these leopards do not entail predominantly 80+ individuals as you initially stated, not when compared with the average gathered form them. Quote:There were 21 adult males and 6 adult females, 3 sub-adult males and 3 sub-adult males. Those weights were then put into that chart to give everyone a better summary: And those weights themselves show hat the majority of the leopards in the study fell bellow 80 kg in weight, so regardless if it's 5 or 8, that's still not even half of the 21 males in the sample. Stating that they reach that weight mark with regularity as you previously said was again, wrong. Quote:The thing is that you gather weights from all sort of sources, including Instgram posts. You then put them in a table and come to the conclusion they average *insert weight*. That's not how it works. The weights were gathered from the already mentioned organization that capture the jaguars directly, they were not "random IG posts" as you keep going on about. IG is the most reliable way for these biologists to update on the captures and share the data, and still, most of the weights on that table are coming from the official sites directly, the mouth of the biologists themselves, or already published data. All of this is more reliable than jumping to conclusions about the weights of some very unstudied animals like Central African leopards based on a few skulls put together by another poster here (Chui) in a table, table which you love to reference a lot. Quote:First of all, the 66kg average number is currently regarded as an average for the whole subspecies while it's an average from data they gather from across Iran. It's not an average of a population. Ignoring the fact that they do in fact grow larger up North won't change that. Also, all the larger Persian skulls originate from these regions. The 115kg or 95kg in your case too originated from upper Iran. And because the whole subspecies is discussed here, then the averages from all over their range is relevant. And now the burden of proof to show data that depicts that they do grow bigger in the northern areas falls on you. Quote:Exactly, that's what the skull ratio part of the discussion was all about. Also, both were population averages, no individual skulls or whatsoever. And what is the number sample and source for both of those averages? Especially for the Congolese leopards, is it Chui's table? Because there are very few collective data on their skulls gathered in comparison to what is available for jaguars, at least in the study by Hoogesteijn. Quote:How am I mad? Who's the one who decides to reply here? I wasn't even discussing with you in the first place, in this case it happened to be Pckts but on another forum. I already mentioned how you kept referencing me in a different forum, if you do not want to be called out publicly then don't disparage others publicly, so nobody is going to PM you. Now it's up to you to post all the data to contradict our claims, otherwise don't reference what we do here when you have nothing of value to contribute.
About latest discussion, it starts to go in circles and in a way, which makes people to lose interest to the topic, imo. It´s one thing to discuss about differences and similarities, another to get stuck in endless yes-no competition leading to more and more personal arguing. It happens in many places, but here it´s stopped at some point. Members can read. While some discussion and debate is always ok and even welcome, there is no need to continue if things start to go to the personal level. And what happens for instance in Carnivora or some other forum, keep it there, don´t bring those discussions here. Especially if you are having some personal insult contest going on.
I see this jaguar-leopard situation as quite simple. When looking at weights, biggest jaguar populations are clearly bigger than biggest leopard populations. I don´t think, that anyone can disagree. Speculating overall with sizes of certain Leopard populations and in what way they overlap with jaguars is another thing. Obviously biggest leopards are bigger than many jaguars, there is no question about it. Even though in average jaguars are bigger. What comes to Persian leopards, naturally it can be discussed if inside subspecies for instance northern population produces bigger individuals than southern population. Just like when talking about jaguars it´s often discussed about population at Pantanal. It´s quite clear that nowadays Pantanal jaguars are bigger than other populations even though it´s not considered as own subspecies. If talking about leopards only, it´s more or less like this: 1. Does northern population of Persian leopard produce bigger individuals than southern? Possibly, but so far no conclusive proof to be sure. 2. Do Gabonese leopards produce some really big individuals and maybe biggest in Africa? Possibly, but so far no conclusive proof to say so as it would be self-evident. It can be speculated with no problem if there are some good arguments and information. Lately it looks like, that there are disagreements, but also misunderstandings and maybe even on purpose partially. I hope, that I´m wrong in that last. Anyway if more mocking (obvious or "hidden"), then moderation will happen in one way or another. Hopefully this is fair enough warning now.
@Shadow
We do have some evidence of Leopard skull lengths being correlated with Leopard size. As in, the longer the skull the heavier the weight. Here are a bunch of skull length measurements.  *This image is copyright of its original author Here are body weight averages.  *This image is copyright of its original author "Our skull data indicated that it is very rare to see female Leopards exceeding 210 mm in greatest skull length which is associated with 190-200 cm in condylobasal skull length, as used by Christiansen and Harris (2012), together with larger and thicker teeth and a well-developed sagittal crest, which is almost absent on most female skulls (only 1 among 14 female skulls in our sample had a well-developed crest). There was some overlap on the scatterplot between adult female specimens and several smaller males" Farhadinia et. al. 2014. Patterns of sexual dimorphism in the Persian Leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor) and implications for sex differentiation 9 males had a skull length of 250 mm or more and 9 males weighed 75-115kg. A Kenyan leopard shot with a 260 mm long skull, and weighed 78 kg:  *This image is copyright of its original author So a good Leopard skull length will indicate a fairly large Leopards. Considering the Congo Basin had many decent length (and width) skulls, there may be an indication that there were likely many 70-80 kg as well as some 80+ kg Leopards. Possibly even a few 90 or 90+ kg specimens still lurking. (09-18-2020, 10:59 AM)Styx38 Wrote: @Shadow You are free to post these things as you did. My main point was, that people shouldn´t always be too eager to "win" some debate, when there are different kind of points of views and some debate is possible. Making a good posting with good reasoning is something what people read willingly and for sure then thinking about it, that do they feel convinced or not. When someone disagrees and makes a good posting telling why, again people who are interested do read it and then they for sure compare those postings and things said. Naturally debates happen and nothing wrong in it, when people stay calm. Now we started to see first signs for emotions heating up. Same signs have been seen more than once before and usually leading to nothing good. I have no problem with that idea, that bigger skull probably means also big animal, it´s just logical thing to assume. It looks like that most problems in these comparing discussions occur, when talking about jaguars and leopards same time. I hope, that those problems could be solved in some reasonable way. Because I don´t think that anyone really disagrees with it, that jaguars are simply heavier in average. So it should be possible. For sure there can be 80-90 kg leopards lurking in Congo Basin, question is maybe more about it, that how many really? Problem is in it, that not too much information yet. That´s why I said as my opinion, that possibly, because I haven´t ruled it out in my thoughts. This is one of those things, which can´t be at this point proven one way or another. So if there is disagreement, different "sides" can tell why they agree or disagree, but it´s pointless to wait for a clear "win".
@Shadow the debate is not about which one is bigger, because in that area there is nothing to debate. The same way we don't debate which one is bigger between a Bengal tiger and a jaguar. The implications are that leopards can grow the average size of Pantanal jaguars, which is something completely unfounded, and so one side has decided to purposely misrepresent and omit data to their liking to reduce the size of jaguars and exaggerate the ones for leopards to put them in the same weight/size class.
The post before you kept insisting on the 115 kg leopard that was disproven by the people who had control of said leopard up untill it was put down, yet for claims such as the 180 kg jaguars or 120 kg cougar records everyone has no problem agreeing that they are unlikely. And the only difference between the jaguar and cougar records and the one of the leopard, is that the latter one has already been pointed out as incorrect. Furthermore, the misrepresentation of the work that we have done on here implying that our research consists of lazy "IG post" compilations when the other side has no problem using that same platform to post weights for leopards on their thread is what's infuriating. Especially when they themselves utilize self-made skull tables to justify their claims for Central African leopards. I have no problem with sound debate, but I'm not gonna sit back and allow others to lie and misrepresent what we have done on here only because they can't come to terms with the reality that leopards and jaguars are not the same animal nor do they belong in the same weight/size class. (09-18-2020, 05:13 PM)Balam Wrote: @Shadow the debate is not about which one is bigger, because in that area there is nothing to debate. The same way we don't debate which one is bigger between a Bengal tiger and a jaguar. The implications are that leopards can grow the average size of Pantanal jaguars, which is something completely unfounded, and so one side has decided to purposely misrepresent and omit data to their liking to reduce the size of jaguars and exaggerate the ones for leopards to put them in the same weight/size class. You make your point clear in this last posting and also you tell why. That´s ok and how things are preferred here. It´s understandable that emotions are present when there is a lot of interest towards something. Sometimes it´s good to breath a few times and count to 10 or 100 before writing ;  This discussion has provided good information to all people who are interested. Naturally there´s some "gray area" when information has been obtained from many places and no new studies published lately. It creates a good platform for debates. Problems come usually, when people get offended and then feelings heat up, more or less. Average weight of jaguars is somewhat debatable even though information which you and some other posters have provided gives a strong base to say, that Pantanal jaguars are nowadays bigger than for instance 30 years ago. And when in past their average weight was over 90 kg for males, naturally the chance to see a leopard which would be the size of an average Pantanal jaguar is slim. It can be speculated though a bit, because after all average size of Pantanal jaguar haven´t been stated lately in any study. If that average weight for males is really around 115 kg, it´s quite safe to say that no leopard reach such weight. Or if, then we would be talking about "once in a lifetime" leopard, some huge freak of nature among leopards. If average weight would be around 100 kg for Pantanal jaguars, then chances would be a bit better, but still that big leopard would be a record breaker, not likely something what could be seen every now and then. Obviously, because I don´t remember any 100 kg leopard ever, which would be reliable. But I personally can´t rule out the possibility, that one could be out there. There is so little information about some leopard populations like Gabonese Basin. When we discuss here, some level of disagreements has to be tolerated and understood. While overall size of jaguars and leopards isn´t debatable since there is no contest, there is room for some speculation for it, that how big the biggest leopards can be. If not starting to go too much "over the top". 
Pantanal males average is above 100 kg, a 90-95 kg average is more leaning towards modern Cerrado male jaguars which overlap in size with Pantanal males specially when the Cerrado males reach the 110-120 kg range.
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