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04-22-2014, 04:33 AM( This post was last modified: 04-22-2014, 04:34 AM by GuateGojira )
(04-22-2014, 04:02 AM)'Pckts' Wrote: Look at the video just posted in the Indian Lion thread.
Those gir lions look to be identical to their african cousins in size and mane color. I am started to get curious about the actual differences between the two, morphologically.
Do you know what anatomical differences exist?
The "popular" knowledge states that the Indian lion is smaller than the African lion and this seems right as Indian lions average about 265 cm while African lions are about 274 cm. However, the few chest girths of Indian lions are slightly larger than those from Africa, but as the sample is too small, a reliable comparison is impossible.
On the body mass issue, modern Indian lions weigh no more than 190 kg (including stomach content), but in the old days they weighed more. Divyabhanusinh (2005) states that the heaviest male Indian lion recorded in history was of c.255 kg and measured c.285 cm (page 95). The figure of 306 kg quoted by Gerad Wood (1978) is incorrect as his source (Ali, 1927) made bad conversion of the measurements. This figure is about the same than the heaviest African lions in record, so we can conclude that in old days, Indian lions weighed the same than those from Africa but the surviving population from Gir weigh much less.
The mane issue is completely irrelevant. Indian lions have less mane, but this is just for the climate. In modern India, I have not found pictures of maneless lions while there are several ones in Africa, especially in the East of the continent. In captivity, Indian lions develop manes just like that of the Barbary. So, there is no difference in mane at all.
The belly fold is claimed to exist only in India, but that is not true. The Barbary lions have it and the lions from West-Africa also present the same characteristic. In fact, is practically impossible to distinguish, at first sight between an Indian or a Benin lion, to put an example. However, this is because these three populations belong to the same subspecies (Panthera leo leo). In other African populations (East and Southern), the belly fold is very rare or nonexistent.
Finally, the divided foramina in the skull is a very weird characteristic of the African lions, but it is not rare in the Barbary lions, some Bengal tigers and even some European cave lions. The best explanation about why it is so common in India is because these population is highly inbreed.
In summary, there is practically no difference, morphological or genetic, between the Indian lions and those from north Africa and West-Africa, but they have some differences with the East and Southern Africa populations, like a smaller size, relative lower body mass (modern times) and cranial characteristics. Finally, DNA suggest that all lions had a common origin in East Africa, but Asian lions separated from the main stream about 100,000 years ago, and after a great extinction of the lions from the Mediterranean area and the west of Africa, they repopulated the area and establish a new genetic form (Bertola et al., 2012).
Following the newest and most complete genetic study about lions at this time (Dubach et al, 2013), the taxonomy of modern lion (Panthera leo) is: * Panthera leo leo - Asia, north and west Africa. * Panthera leo melanochaita - Sub-Saharan region with two clades: a-East Africa and b-Southern Africa.
However, do to its higlty endangered situation, Indian lions should retain its clasification of P. l. persica just for CONSERVATION purposes.
