Maximum size of prey that a single male lion or tiger can kill

[Pckts]

@GuateGojira 

Quote:And also you say that "which wasn't often at all", so now you are calling Dr Karanth and Dr Sunquist liars. I think that you allready reached a point were there is no other excuse from your part that the only thing that you can do is going against the reputation of these experts, and that is veeeeeery low from you part @Pckts.

Stop putting words in my mouth, I've never said anything along these lines. We're both interpreting the same data, you have no conclusive evidence to back your claim and neither do I.

Quote:Dude, is this for real??? You claimed that the animals were not weighed several times, now I show you the image where IT SHOWS that the animals killed were ACTUALLY WEIGHED. The problem is not if the image have a weight or not, is the fact that you continue saying that they did not weighed the carcasses when there is an image that actually shows how they weighed even the biggest gaurs.

I said in the Studies I posted, never did I say that he never weighed a single carcass. Again putting words in my mouth.

Quote: Those were real weights and they just estimated the amount ate by the predators, like I told you, they could easely found gaurs of 900 kg in the carcasses and the rest was estimated based in the amount that a tiger can eat in 24 hours and the amount of days that the tiger was with the kill. Certainly there is no problem with that. And a gaur of 900 kg with an average stomach content will weight 1,000 kg easly. Oh yes, don't forget that those huge figures for gaurs or any big herbivore includes stomach content.

Again there is no single 1000kg weight associated to any kill, it's a range of size for Gaurs.



New study published just yesterday documenting the predation rate of tigers on Gaur and Banteng in Thailand https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.6268
Results :

From June 2005 to May 2017, we visited kill sites of 24 radio—collared tigers (9 males and 15 females) and recorded a total of 82 gaur and 79 banteng kills based on carcass or skeletal remains. Of all gaur killed, 15.9% were adult males and 29.3% were adult females; adult male banteng comprised 29.1% of kills and 26.6% of kills were adult females. (Table 1). In contrast, calves composed 39% of gaur kills versus 26.6% of banteng kills. As a consequence, despite the fact gaur males were approximately 1.3 times heavier than male banteng, and gaur females were 1.1 times the weight of female banteng, the average weights of both gaur killed (397.9 kg) was less than the average weight of banteng killed (423.9 kg) (Table 1).



Based on the average sex and age class weights, and the number of kills in each class, the average weight of adult gaur kills was 737.8 kg and they composed 83.7% of the biomass of gaur killed by tigers. Similarly, the mean adult banteng killed weighted 652.2 kg and adults composed 85.6% of biomass of this species killed by tigers. Adults composed 48.8% of gaur and 79.4% of banteng killed by male tigers; whereas, adult gaur and banteng composed 41.1% and 37.8% of female kills, respectively (Table 2).


None of the prediction that we suggested would be support for the hypothesis that gaur and banteng are approaching the size limit of tiger prey were significant. Prediction 1: Male tigers killed fewer adult gaur (n = 21) compared with adult banteng (n = 27), but the difference was not significant (χ2 = 0.75 (1), p = .386). Prediction 2: Females also killed fewer adult male bovids (n = 11) than adult female bovids (n = 21), but the difference was not significant (χ2 = 2.133 (1), p = .063). Prediction 3: Females did not kill significantly fewer adult gaur and banteng (n = 33) than male tigers did (n = 48) (χ2 = 3.13 (1), p < .090). Given that our three predictions were not supported by significant results, our hypothesis that gaur and banteng are near the upper size limit of tiger prey is not confirmed.





Using dental annuli and horn characteristics to classify age and sex of gaur and banteng, combined with published weights for these classes
Showing estimates again and these Gaur are larger than you see in India.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

at this point there is no new data presented on your end other than the same accounts that we both read and interpreted differently. As of now I see no reason to change my view that a healthy 1000kg big bull should have to worry about losing it's life to a Tiger unless unusual circumstances present themselves. Am I 100% convinced, of course not, it's the wild and the minute anyone thinks they know everything that goes on in the wild they are lost. 
But from what I've seen, if it happens, it is going to be a 1/1,000,000 occurrence. Reply