There is a world somewhere between reality and fiction. Although ignored by many, it is very real and so are those living in it. This forum is about the natural world. Here, wild animals will be heard and respected. The forum offers a glimpse into an unknown world as well as a room with a view on the present and the future. Anyone able to speak on behalf of those living in the emerald forest and the deep blue sea is invited to join.
03-17-2022, 05:05 AM( This post was last modified: 03-17-2022, 09:02 AM by Charger01 )
(03-17-2022, 03:54 AM)Pckts Wrote:
(03-17-2022, 02:34 AM)SpinoRex Wrote:
(03-16-2022, 10:27 PM)Pckts Wrote:
(03-16-2022, 08:09 PM)SpinoRex Wrote:
(03-16-2022, 06:30 PM)Pckts Wrote:
(03-16-2022, 05:02 PM)SpinoRex Wrote:
(03-16-2022, 02:57 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:
(03-15-2022, 11:48 PM)SpinoRex Wrote: For some "basic" things i cant find studies but i am 100% sure it is like that. Dr Dale Miquelle said it as well. As i said it already... i think i will contact him to be sure. But for what tigers should have straighter and "smaller" collar bones? It must have to do with flexibility. All in all i would say tigers have a bit smaller collar bones and lions bigger ones. Although the difference isnt big i think (but it is def big compared to other body part differences)
Thank you for the quote of Brakefield. However my question was not about tiger and lion collarbones. Check the post again, I am asking about this that you said:
"The clavicle, also known as collar bone or clavicula is the bone that connects rib cage and arm (from Sternum to Scapula), serving as strut. The Deltoid, the Trapezius, the Pectoralis Major as well as several muscles of the throat are attached to it. Bigger muscles attached to the clavicle necessitate overall larger clavicle size which will, in return, limit flexibility of the arm. That means strength and flexibility of the arms develop inversely and that animals with larger clavicles likely have stronger pectorals and shoulders while animals with smaller clavicles are more flexible."
Because what Brakefiled says in the book that you quote contradict this, as horses had huge chests and pectorals but they lack collarbones. So, reduction of collarbone may be related with something more than just cursorial life, after all lions are more cursorial than tigers, apparently.
Other point, you mention this series of muscles attached to the clavicle and I will like to see your source for this claim, because from the images that I have saw, collarbone is attach only to two muscles:
*This image is copyright of its original author
This from an ocelote
Now, this from a domestic cat (sorry for the low resolution, but you can see the clavicle area):
*This image is copyright of its original author
If that is the case, the size of the clavicle do not means more strength, which the article that you originally posted do not suggested, but is more related with flexibility, but just that.
Then it would mean the lion has the larger muscle in that areas. (I see no reason to develope a larger collar bone by just reducing flexibility). The flexibility comes with the size of the collar bone... though as i said before some questioned the size datas. Therefore i used mainly the curve and robustness as a argument, which means even guessing the collar bones are similar in size... the lion would be stronger. Also collar bone isnt the only factor.... so ther animals might have big chests.
The options i see here are;
1. Lions developed larger and stronger collar bones
2. Lions developed stronger collar bones (by guessing there isnt a size difference)
About the clavicle here are some infos (These are just the muscles... the clavicle bone might have other functions as well)
Quote:The clavotrapezius arises from the back of the skull and middorsal line of the neck and inserts on the clavicle. Its action is to extend the humerus in a forward direction. The acromiotrapezius (which arises on the middorsal line of the neck and thorax and inserts on the metacromion and spine of the scapula) adducts the scapula. The spinotrapezius arises from the spinous processes of thoracic vertebrae and inserts on the fascia covering the scapular muscles. Its action is to adduct the scapula and pull it posteriorly. The major muscle group of the shoulder is the deltoid group. The clavodeltoid originates from the clavicle and inserts on the ulna. This muscle flexes the forearm.The acromiodeltoid lies posterior to the clavodeltoid. It arises from the acromion process of the scapula and inserts on the spinodeltoid muscle.
That with the curve is pretty evident. But would like to see some datas about the clavicle length.
Also lions are build pretty much like forest cats with really minor cursorial adaptions but maintaning the overall "strength". Lions may be more cursorial than tigers but they arent cursorial cats as their limbs are pretty normal for forest dwelling cats. (Yamaguchi)
You literally have chest measurements available, obviously either collar bones don’t contribute to a larger chest in panthera, Tigers collar bones are as large or larger than Lions or the sample size is far small to make any conclusions.
First it was the Humerus and now it’s the collar bone after the humerus showed favor to the Tiger. Instead of looking for tiny advantages in the smallest and imperfect samples, what you/we should take from this is that the body works as a whole, deficits or advantages we interpret may not work that way in these cats.
For me at least when it comes to tigers it seems pretty simple, Tigers longer hind legs need a long stride but being a solitary hunter and forest dweller they don’t need sustained speed, just a quick burst with good agility then the tools to bring down large prey. Which is why they’re far better grapplers than chasers.
I literally answered to the chest girths. Also its not comparable to a skeleton observation.
Quote:Tigers collar bones are as large or larger than Lions or the sample size is far small to make any conclusions.
Thats a heavy statement, which needs to be backed up by evidence in the first place. Also i even excluded the length but was just talking about the robustness and curve.
Quote:First it was the Humerus and now it’s the collar bone after the humerus showed favor to the Tiger. Instead of looking for tiny advantages in the smallest and imperfect samples, what you/we should take from this is that the body works as a whole, deficits or advantages we interpret may not work that way in these cats.
Again a heavy statement without any evidence behind it. I never looked for advantages nor i claimed a species to be stronger overall. I dont know if Khan85 posted the infos on Diameters but the indexes like ML, AP, HEI, HDA are almost equal, while the lion has the higher humeri circumference vs length (relatively and in total).
Quote:I literally answered to the chest girths. Also its not comparable to a skeleton observation.
Answered what specifically?
And what's no comparable to a skeletal observation?
If you knew the body measurements of the animal I guarantee their skeletal structure we represent that too. *Larger individuals would = Larger skeletal structures*
My point was that no matter the skeletal differences you may try to interpret, the real life data doesn't support either Tiger/Lion having a more powerful muscle composition. Chest girth and arm girth are real life measurements, there is no Lion who's body length to chest girth ratio outshines a Tiger. Both generally have fairly equal measurements in that area, there is more of a difference in forelimb girth though, generally speaking the Tiger will possess a bit more mass there.
Quote:Thats a heavy statement, which needs to be backed up by evidence in the first place. Also i even excluded the length but was just talking about the robustness and curve.
There's nothing heavy about it and the evidence again is in real life data. We have 100s of verified cats measured and weighed, not a tiny sample size of captive cats, females v males and small sub species. Again you can look through all the wild individuals you like, there is no correlation of Lions being more powerfully built or vice versa.
Quote:Again a heavy statement without any evidence behind it. I never looked for advantages nor i claimed a species to be stronger overall.
Again, there is nothing "heavy" about it. As Guate has shown, you did make claims about implied advantages.
You also make numerous assumptions based off of sample sizes that are almost nothing or comparisons of females to males, etc.
Quote:I dont know if Khan85 posted the infos on Diameters but the indexes like ML, AP, HEI, HDA are almost equal, while the lion has the higher humeri circumference vs length (relatively and in total).
And the Tiger should a slight advantage there but you use the term "almost equal" then proceed to say the Lion had a "higher" humeri circumference but no mention of the Tigers much more exaggerated Distal and Proximal ends.
Again making assumptions off of the most limited data base and comparing male to female.
@khan85 also provided a larger data base from Dr. Christiansen in which he mentions the more robust Tiger humerus compared but again noting it's nothing significant while the Distal/Proximal ends are the most exaggerated between the two. And those being used specifically for muscle attachments would play a role.
Point being that you have a tendency to look for advantages in the Lion compared to the Tiger while dismissing disadvantages or making them seem meaningless.
Pckts i said before why girth = not skeleton. Its completely different. Lions are said to have proportionally larger chests from what i have heard .
Do you know why i didnt mention it? Because the difference in shaft is visible and that constantly while those infos about distal and proximal ends are from a small sample and based on asiatic lions. Additionally more questionable when even in bengal tigers the measurements in the end differed 50% in the distal extremities. The datas i have collected are based on all of christiansens studies and from others as well. Note the tigers used in his studies were by a great margin heavier and more were captive ones(can be seen in the following table).
For what is the whole shaft important, which is by far the biggest bone on the humerus? Additionally the shaft consists of compact bone while the ends are spongy bones. This having the larger shaft by (6-7% on average) will give you the heavier and stronger humerus bone overall due to having the bigger shaft. The compact bone is the main structure in the body for support, protection, and movement. Due to the strong nature of compact bone, compared to spongy bone, it is the preferred tissue for strength. And beside the fact it will give you of course benefits in muscle mass as you basically have the thicker bone.
Here you have various measurements of the humerus bone for various animals.
*This image is copyright of its original author
So i hope you understood why i didnt mentioned that. One can mention the CC AP, ML which are exaggerated as well.
Humerus was rather equal while tigers were visibly more robust in the ulna bone and radius was similar.
This may be interesting as well (2nd from left; Tiger, 2nd from right; Lion). Humerus, Ulna ad Radius
*This image is copyright of its original author
So for some results i would like to see further datas. So talking bout clavicle will waste our time.
Quote:Pckts i said before why girth = not skeleton. Its completely different. Lions are said to have proportionally larger chests from what i have heard .
"Heard" from who?
There is no Lion chest girth that isn't matched or exceeded by a Tiger. No matter what body length you compare, proportionally a Tiger can and has matched or exceeded any Lion.
Quote:Do you know why i didnt mention it? Because the difference in shaft is visible and that constantly while those infos about distal and proximal ends are from a small sample and based on asiatic lions. Additionally more questionable when even in bengal tigers the measurements in the end differed 50% in the distal extremities. The datas i have collected are based on all of christiansens studies and from others as well. Note the tigers used in his studies were by a great margin heavier and more were captive ones(can be seen in the following table).
How exactly is it visible and the distal/proximal ends are not? And there is no specifications of whether it's an Asiatic or African Lion used but regardless the ends are the major difference between the two. And making an excuse that it's an Asiatic Lion but not using the same excuse that it's a Tigress compared to a Male Lion is questionable at best.
And once again, you have Christiansen specifically stating the Tiger has a more robust Humerus. And no doubt they are heavier since you're comparing them with Small, Malaysian females. Not to mention, the average in the Table shown mentions 130kg which again would be female Tigers.
Quote:For what is the whole shaft important, which is by far the biggest bone on the humerus? Additionally the shaft consists of compact bone while the ends are spongy bones. This having the larger shaft by (6-7% on average) will give you the heavier and stronger humerus bone overall due to having the bigger shaft. The compact bone is the main structure in the body for support, protection, and movement. Due to the strong nature of compact bone, compared to spongy bone, it is the preferred tissue for strength. And beside the fact it will give you of course benefits in muscle mass as you basically have the thicker bone.
The Ends aren't spongy, I'm not sure where you got that. The tendons that connect the muscle to the bone at the end will be spongy so you should correct that claim. And proportionally a shorter shaft with similar density will be stronger than a longer shaft of similar density, not to mention the exaggerated ends that produce larger muscle attachments. It only makes sense for the bone to withstand more force when it's wielder produces more force.
Quote:Here you have various measurements of the humerus bone for various animals.
Again, you're comparing an averaged Cat of 130kg (female) to 174kg (male) not to mention no real sample size mentioned. On top of that, you have the actual author of that study specifically saying the Tigers humerus would top the list between the two.
Quote:This may be interesting as well (2nd from left; Tiger, 2nd from right; Lion). Humerus, Ulna ad Radius
Once again, Age, sex, subspecies and captivity status all lacking.
Quote:The Ends aren't spongy, I'm not sure where you got that. The tendons that connect the muscle to the bone at the end will be spongy so you should correct that claim. And proportionally a shorter shaft with similar density will be stronger than a longer shaft of similar density, not to mention the exaggerated ends that produce larger muscle attachments. It only makes sense for the bone to withstand more force when it's wielder produces more force.
He's talking about cortical bone thickness (thickness of compact bone). The whole shaft isn't solid, the center has spongy tissue for production of RBCs.
In a sample of two lions and two tigers, lions had more compact (hard) bone. It was essentially like this - Lion>Tiger>Lion>Tiger
The two lions they used (one male and one female) were both wild lions from Kenya. The tigers, on the other hand, were both malayan tigresses and captive. One of the tiger did have a wider humerus (mediolaterally) than both lions but it would logically be less compact/solid because captive animals don't undergo as much amount of stresses as wild ones in running, climbing, fighting etc.
(03-17-2022, 02:59 AM)dominusforti Wrote: I feel like there is a lot of bias going on here...on both sides. Nevertheless, I agree with @SpinoRex in that lions and tigers are very similar, they belong to a rather osteologically homogeneous group (Panthera) and are within that group the most similar species to each other.
But, for the clavicles, first I will say that the difference is obviously statistically significant, all the other felids group together (with some variation) but the African lion and, crucially, the American lion, stand out as having significantly higher values. I'm not insinuating this makes them stronger but it's not worth debating the obvious truth that the difference is real and not caused by some kind of sampling error.
Fwiw, larger and more recurved claviculae are typically found in arboreal species, whereas terrestrial (especially cursorial) species tend to have reduced clavicles or lack them altogether.
So, the advantage would be something that helps scansorial taxa use their forelimbs to climb. The cost is a little less clear but it definitely isn't helping in the lion's cursorial habits. Therefore the adaptive reason would need to be something else. Possibly allowing lions to compensate for their general trend toward cursoriality while still needing to stalk, accelerate, and grapple large prey like the other pantherine felids.
How can there be no sampling error when you're comparing all females to mostly males and on top of that, one of the smallest sub species of Tigers, one being a stillborn as well.
I mean, in the nicest way possible but did you read through the paper? Because it explains why sexual dimorphism cannot explain the marked difference not just between lions and tigers but between both types of lion (two different species belonging to the lion ecomorph and lineage) and all other forms of felid. In a principal components analysis, "the lions [which they describe as the large, robust clavicular morph] and large fossil morphs clearlt separate themselves from the other felids, with the tigers overlapping with, although falling toward the large-end of the rest of the cats."
The difference between lions and all other felids was diagnostic enough for the researchers to deduce that large fossil morph had to be Panthera atrox, due to its lion-like values. P. leo plots closer to the giant P. atrox than it does with P. tigris, which overlaps with the other smaller felids and remains identifiably separate from P. leo on PC 1. The difference therefore seems much too significant to attribute to sexual dimorphism and, even to entertain that notion for a moment, the felids for which males and females were included did exhibit strong sex-based differences, and the single lioness clavicle is just as distinct from the tiger sample as the male lions were.
03-17-2022, 09:44 PM( This post was last modified: 03-17-2022, 09:45 PM by GuateGojira )
(03-17-2022, 01:52 AM)SpinoRex Wrote: Yes,
I never said lions are overall stronger but in a certain area where the clavicle plays a role(same for tigers when it comes to the forearm; Ulna the tiger, radius similar and paws as well). Lets assume that the robustness and length are equal.... alone due to the curvature the lion will have more surface area.
I communicated with Yamaguchi months ago. I read his studies and you can see his note "cats with a higher index are usually more cursorial, but the lion is an exception, while the tiger is a typical forest cat". Based on several studies you may have noticed that lions are except the BI extremely similar to tigers in both robusticity, strength, length and overall limb proportions (backed up by a study and stated by yamaguchi). If you go by BI you are right but if you mean the whole limb you are wrong.
Now you focus in this? If the lion is more cursorial than tiger is not important here, and I will kept what Dr Sunquist and Yamaguchi says in they documents, which is clear: Lions are more cursorial and closer to cheetah in that aspect, period.
NowI will return to the main point again, the clavicle issue. And again I put it in the table, the sample is biased, contrary to what @dominusforti sais in his previous post. A partial conclusion based in a sample of males against females and large subspecies against small subspecies, is not correct.
Again, captive lions may average over 200 kg and captive lionesses over 130 kg, but captive Malayan tigresses average less than 100 kg. Captive lions develope ticker bones while tigers do not have a significant difference (based in the skull). So how this study can be conclusive? Suggestive at least, but is not statistically conclusive, that is sure.
Also, again, the study suggest that Smilodon fatalis had the smallest clavicles and we perfectly know that Smilodon was heavier and stronger than any modern lion or tiger. So clavicle so not help in strengt but only in locomotion.
03-18-2022, 12:00 AM( This post was last modified: 03-18-2022, 09:10 AM by dominusforti )
(03-17-2022, 09:44 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:
(03-17-2022, 01:52 AM)SpinoRex Wrote: Yes,
I never said lions are overall stronger but in a certain area where the clavicle plays a role(same for tigers when it comes to the forearm; Ulna the tiger, radius similar and paws as well). Lets assume that the robustness and length are equal.... alone due to the curvature the lion will have more surface area.
I communicated with Yamaguchi months ago. I read his studies and you can see his note "cats with a higher index are usually more cursorial, but the lion is an exception, while the tiger is a typical forest cat". Based on several studies you may have noticed that lions are except the BI extremely similar to tigers in both robusticity, strength, length and overall limb proportions (backed up by a study and stated by yamaguchi). If you go by BI you are right but if you mean the whole limb you are wrong.
Now you focus in this? If the lion is more cursorial than tiger is not important here, and I will kept what Dr Sunquist and Yamaguchi says in they documents, which is clear: Lions are more cursorial and closer to cheetah in that aspect, period.
NowI will return to the main point again, the clavicle issue. And again I put it in the table, the sample is biased, contrary to what @dominusforti sais in his previous post. A partial conclusion based in a sample of males against females and large subspecies against small subspecies, is not correct.
Again, captive lions may average over 200 kg and captive lionesses over 130 kg, but captive Malayan tigresses average less than 100 kg. Captive lions develope ticker bones while tigers do not have a significant difference (based in the skull). So how this study can be conclusive? Suggestive at least, but is not statistically conclusive, that is sure.
Also, again, the study suggest that Smilodon fatalis had the smallest clavicles and we perfectly know that Smilodon was heavier and stronger than any modern lion or tiger. So clavicle so not help in strengt but only in locomotion.
I didn't say the sample wasn't biased, I said the results weren't caused by a sampling error. The sample is obviously biased, the paper ackowledges that. However the paper also notes that it is UNLIKELY, not impossible but certainly implausible, that the RESULTS were caused by that bias. This is because the study includes males and females of other taxa and notes that sexual dimorphism doesn't produce differences great enough to account for the separation lions have from all the other felids. Lions are identifiable, male or female, from all the other felids studied, enough so so that an anonymous felid clavicle can be determined as that of a lion merely based on the fact that the leonine claviculae are diagnostic enough to do so.
Dominusforti is correct. Here is the relevant section from the paper:
Quote:Unfortunately, the scarcity of clavicles in mod- ern felid collections precluded adequate known sex distributions, and therefore, sexual dimorphism could not be excluded as a possible explanation for the dimorphism exhibited in the fossil clavicle sample. Although it would have been particularly interesting to compare the two fossil morphs to sexual dimorphism in tigers and lions, none of the museums have clavicular specimens assigned to male tigers, and only one of the lion specimens was recorded as a female. This leaves the possibil- ity that the size difference seen between the mod- ern lions and tigers and in the two fossil morphs (Fig. 1 and Table 2) is the result of sexual dimor- phism. However, the single female lion in our com- parative sample has among the largest clavicles, and the differences between the clavicles of the two large modern pantherines and the two fossil morphs seems to far exceed the levels of sexual dimorphism exhibited in other skeletal elements of modern felids. The clavicles of male and female cheetah and pumas (n ratios of 1:3 and 5:6, respec- tively) do not appear to exhibit very high levels of sexual dimorphism—for only three of the seven measurements are the male cheetah clavicles larger those of the females (and only a maximum of 27% larger: acromial end thickness), and male pumas are on average larger than female pumas for only five of the seven measures (and only 37% larger for total length). Whereas the larger morph of fossil clavicles are at least 89% (for acromial end AP thickness) and up to 240% (for sternal end thickness) larger than the small morph in all seven measures. Furthermore, the qualitative dif- ferences between the large and small morphs of the Rancho La Brea specimens exceed those found within any of the modern felid species. In other words, the large Rancho La Brea specimens look very much like the clavicles of modern panther- ines, whereas the small Rancho La Brea morph looks very different than any modern felid. There- fore, evidence suggests that the dimorphism in the Rancho La Brea felid clavicle morphology exhib- ited is not sexual but taxonomic.
The research paper also highlighted the function of clavicles
"Clavicles are reduced or absent in most members of the order Carnivora. In no carnivoran species do the clavicles come in contact with the acromion process or the manubrium. When present (as in felids), the bone is imbedded in the muscles of the shoulder, connected by fibrous tissue to the scapula and to the sternum by a ligamentous band (Field and Taylor, 1950; Evans, 1993; Cerny and Cizinauskas, 1995). Extant felid species retain the bone (deep to and the dividing border of the clavotrapezius and clavodeltoideus mm.), whereas many adult caniforms have lost the bone altogether (Cerny and Cizinauskas, 1995). Adaptive advantages to reduction or loss of the clavicles may include freeing the shoulder movement to increase stride, linear (rather than arcuate) excursion of the shoulder joint, and restriction of pectoral limb movements to the sagittal plane for increased cursoriality (Jenkins, 1974; Cerny and Cizinauskas,1995). Greater absorption of impact from running/landing by pectoral limb muscles might also be facilitated by clavicle reduction."
In all, it acts as an anchor for two muscles - clavotrapezius and clavodeltoideus
(03-18-2022, 12:00 AM)dominusforti Wrote: I didn't say the sample wasn't biased, I said the results weren't caused by a sampling error. The sample is obviously biased, the paper ackowledges that. However the paper also notes that it is UNLIKELY, not impossible but certainly implausible, that the RESULTS were caused by that bias. This is because the study includes males and females of other taxa and notes that sexual dimorphism doesn't produce differences great enough to account for the separation lions have from all the other felids. Lions are identifiable, male or female, from all the other felids studied, enough so so that an anonymous felid clavicle can be determined as that of a lion merely based on the fact that the leonine claviculae are diagnostic enough to do so.
I understand and I am agree in that, because that is the real focus of the study. However the problem is that @SpinoRex is using the study to do something completelly diferent, which is to justify that the size of the clavicle is related with strength, which is something that the document do not mean to do. As @"Khan85" explained, the document focus in other thing, not in show that a larger clavicle provide more force or anything like that. In fact, the main focus of the study is to separate the clavicles from Panthera atrox and those from Smilodon fatalis.
Now, even when sexual dimorphism is probably not the answer, subspecies origin probably is, and that is something that the study did not focused. After all, the bones of an 98 kg Malayan tigress are significantly smaller than those of a 135 kg Indian tigress. But we know than that was not the point of the study, this is just to invalidate the specific claim of SpinoRex.
(03-17-2022, 02:59 AM)dominusforti Wrote: I feel like there is a lot of bias going on here...on both sides. Nevertheless, I agree with @SpinoRex in that lions and tigers are very similar, they belong to a rather osteologically homogeneous group (Panthera) and are within that group the most similar species to each other.
But, for the clavicles, first I will say that the difference is obviously statistically significant, all the other felids group together (with some variation) but the African lion and, crucially, the American lion, stand out as having significantly higher values. I'm not insinuating this makes them stronger but it's not worth debating the obvious truth that the difference is real and not caused by some kind of sampling error.
Fwiw, larger and more recurved claviculae are typically found in arboreal species, whereas terrestrial (especially cursorial) species tend to have reduced clavicles or lack them altogether.
So, the advantage would be something that helps scansorial taxa use their forelimbs to climb. The cost is a little less clear but it definitely isn't helping in the lion's cursorial habits. Therefore the adaptive reason would need to be something else. Possibly allowing lions to compensate for their general trend toward cursoriality while still needing to stalk, accelerate, and grapple large prey like the other pantherine felids.
How can there be no sampling error when you're comparing all females to mostly males and on top of that, one of the smallest sub species of Tigers, one being a stillborn as well.
I mean, in the nicest way possible but did you read through the paper? Because it explains why sexual dimorphism cannot explain the marked difference not just between lions and tigers but between both types of lion (two different species belonging to the lion ecomorph and lineage) and all other forms of felid. In a principal components analysis, "the lions [which they describe as the large, robust clavicular morph] and large fossil morphs clearlt separate themselves from the other felids, with the tigers overlapping with, although falling toward the large-end of the rest of the cats."
The difference between lions and all other felids was diagnostic enough for the researchers to deduce that large fossil morph had to be Panthera atrox, due to its lion-like values. P. leo plots closer to the giant P. atrox than it does with P. tigris, which overlaps with the other smaller felids and remains identifiably separate from P. leo on PC 1. The difference therefore seems much too significant to attribute to sexual dimorphism and, even to entertain that notion for a moment, the felids for which males and females were included did exhibit strong sex-based differences, and the single lioness clavicle is just as distinct from the tiger sample as the male lions were.
The paper compares the Tiger Clavicles used and mentioning them to be nearer to the size of a smaller pantherinae than it's large cat classification and of course this is because they are using one of the smallest sub species and females or even stillborns. This has nothing to do with whether sexual dimorphism plays a part or not.
Notice the statement below:
"Body size and weight of large pantherines, when
compared with respective clavicle sizes and morphologies, shows that the clavicle has been
reduced far more in P. tigris than in P. leo. This is
unexpected because P. tigris is on average significantly larger than P. leo, although they are closely"
So if you're using a standard Tigers weight which is 30-50% larger than the specimens used, of course this statement is true. But if you use the actual weights of this specific sub species or had larger Tiger samples on hand, the sizes would no doubt increase and who knows if they're actually reduced or not.
In regards to differences between sex's, they mention that they have no real samples to compare between Lions and Tigers and strictly use one female Lion as an outlier since her clavicle was one of the largest. This doesn't mean much since it could be a large female or just an outlier in general. On top of that, both Cheetah and Puma showed males to be larger than the females in regards to clavicles. This wasn't the case for every single one but for most. And since Puma and Cheetah generally don't have as much of a dimorphic difference as Tigers and Lions when it comes to weight and muscle build, they most likely wouldn't show as much of a difference regardless. But you can pretty much guarantee that if you took a 200kg Bengal Tiger Male and compared it to a 100kg or less Tigress, you will see major differences.
Long story short, there absolutely is a sampling error here. The sample size itself is minuscule and when it comes to Tigers, the smaller sub species could obviously play a role in their conclusions like I explained above. Unfortunately they didn't have much to go off of but you would need Male and females from the same sub species, their weights and a real sample size to see what/if any differences there are.
(03-27-2022, 07:40 PM)Gabriele Wrote: Are there examples of interspecies contact between domestic cats and big cats in the wild? and how did the two cats behave?
Yeah, I’ve seen photos of leopards and pumas killing them and I believe once a tiger as well but I would have to find these again
ABSTRACT—This is the first report of cannibalism in a free-ranging population of jaguars (Panthera
onca). An encounter among unfamiliar jaguars may have provoked social stress, a behavior reported in other free-ranging carnivores.
Important points: 1. Cannibalism occurs but is rare in jaguars 2. Infanticide occurs in jaguars more commonly than cannibalism 3. (juiciest part) Among adult felids, factors that lead to cannibal- ism may include defense of cubs (Logan and
Sweanor, 2001), defense of prey (Galentine and
Swift, 2007), and apparent competition (Hunter and Skinner, 1995).
The saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis is known predominantly from “predator trap” deposits, which has made many aspects of its life history difficult to infer. Here, we describe an association of at least two subadult and one adult S. fatalis from Pleistocene coastal deposits in Ecuador. The assemblage likely derived from a catastrophic mass mortality event, and thereby provides insights into the behavior of the species. The presence of a P3 in the subadult dentaries suggests inheritance, a rare instance of familial relatedness in the fossil record. The siblings were at least two years old and were associated with an adult that was likely their mother, indicating prolonged parental care in S. fatalis. Comparison with the growth of pantherine cats suggests that S. fatalis had a unique growth strategy among big cats that combines a growth rate that is similar to a tiger and the extended growth period of a lion.
'At two years old, tigers (Panthera tigris) have been independent from their mothers for at least six months and weigh between 68% (males) and 94% (females) of their asymptotic body mass (Jones et al. (2009); Slaght et al., 2005). Meanwhile, two-year-old lions are nearly a year from independence and weigh from 58% (males) to 72% (females) of asymptotic body mass (Jones et al. (2009); Smuts et al. (1980)).'
Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences
