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Modern Weights and Measurements of Wild Lions
Modern Weights and Measurements of Wild Lions
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Modern Weights and Measurements of Wild Lions
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 (11-16-2020, 07:35 PM)Khan85 Wrote: I'll try to contact the person. https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-lions-i...nd-namibia  (11-16-2020, 07:55 PM)Pckts Wrote:(11-16-2020, 07:35 PM)Khan85 Wrote: I'll try to contact the person. Oh alright, so some of these lions are unhealthy. (11-16-2020, 08:26 PM)Khan85 Wrote:(11-16-2020, 07:55 PM)Pckts Wrote:(11-16-2020, 07:35 PM)Khan85 Wrote: I'll try to contact the person. Some but not all and no determination of which are which. There is a large data base for Kruger males and the largest was 225kg and between the North and South population id say a good average should be 180-190kg for males. Fairly typical for Lions throughout Africa. 
A lot of the weights posted in YouTube animal channels come directly from this forum. That channel specifically is not reliable as the person who runs it is extremely bias, similar to what you see on some Tapatalk forums.
That same individual posted a comparison between an Ussuri brown bear and a Siberian tiger stating that the tiger was 200+ kg on average, when we know that's far from the truth. The purpose was to decrease the size of the bear and increase the size of the tiger to make them as similar in build as possible. I'd stay away from those channels/forums and treat all the "data" they post with a grain of salt. (11-16-2020, 09:05 PM)Balam Wrote: A lot of the weights posted in YouTube animal channels come directly from this forum. That channel specifically is not reliable as the person who runs it is extremely bias, similar to what you see on some Tapatalk forums.Yellowstone Brown Bears average 193kg for 5 year old + Males (65* individuals) and Amur Tiger weights between modern and past weights will be around the same average. I'm not sure how the Ussuri Brown Bear weights compare to Yellowstone but I thought both overlapped quite a bit. (11-16-2020, 10:30 PM)Pckts Wrote:(11-16-2020, 09:05 PM)Balam Wrote: A lot of the weights posted in YouTube animal channels come directly from this forum. That channel specifically is not reliable as the person who runs it is extremely bias, similar to what you see on some Tapatalk forums.Yellowstone Brown Bears average 193kg for 5 year old + Males (65* individuals) and Amur Tiger weights between modern and past weights will be around the same average. I'm not sure how the Ussuri Brown Bear weights compare to Yellowstone but I thought both overlapped quite a bit. Brotherbear posted this chart before involving Ussuri brown bears, although I'm curious regarding the sample size and time the bears were weighed, we know brown bears fluctuate in mass dramatically depending on the season:  *This image is copyright of its original author Jordan Carlton from the International Association for Bear Management released this article on NatGeo and he said this concerning Ussuri brown bears: The black grizzly or Ussuri brown bear (Ursus arctos lasiotus) is another big bear occasionally attaining a size greater than the Kamchatka brown bear. These bears are found in the Amur and Ussuri River regions of the Russian Far East, northeastern China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan. I don't want to turn this into a tiger vs bear conversation and I'm sure this could be carried on in different threads, but my point is that certain channels online have a tendency to cherry-pick information and present in a way that is deceiving but supports their bias for a specific animal. If you look at the comments under that thread you have people with names such as "leopard owns lions" gratifying on the seemingly low weights posted on that chart. (11-16-2020, 10:48 PM)Balam Wrote:(11-16-2020, 10:30 PM)Pckts Wrote:(11-16-2020, 09:05 PM)Balam Wrote: A lot of the weights posted in YouTube animal channels come directly from this forum. That channel specifically is not reliable as the person who runs it is extremely bias, similar to what you see on some Tapatalk forums.Yellowstone Brown Bears average 193kg for 5 year old + Males (65* individuals) and Amur Tiger weights between modern and past weights will be around the same average. I'm not sure how the Ussuri Brown Bear weights compare to Yellowstone but I thought both overlapped quite a bit. Bigger than Yellowstone Bears on Average or the maximum. The largest Yellowstone Bear weighed was 301kg and that is with a larger sample size in comparison.  (11-16-2020, 07:35 PM)Khan85 Wrote: I'll try to contact the person. Nevermind, it is an image, not a video.
Wild Life in South Africa
By J. Stevenson-Hamilton His Conclusions "Anything over 9' (274cm) in a straight line is a good average male lion" "Anything over 9'4'' (284cm) is a big one" "Anything over 9'6'' (289cm) is exceptional" The following weights and measurements were from 50 Males and 25 females which were the largest out of double that number shot.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author His average weight for 5 males - 386lbs (175kg) With his largest male weighed - 456lbs (206kg) w/full belly "30lbs of meat estimated" Average head and body length for his largest 50 males - 75'' (190cm) His Longest male HBL - 81'' (205cm) 
^ Nice information (although reading about big cats being shot is depressing). That little bit of information about tiger weights in Burma in that source is interesting too, namely that they are roughly the same size as African lions:
“As regards measurements there seems little to choose, and provided the tape is properly used a 10-ft. tiger in Burma seems to be as great a rarity as a 10-ft. lion in Africa. Mr. Peacock believes that a large male tiger might weigh about 400 lbs, and a large female about 100 lbs less. This agrees very well with my own experiences of lions’ weights in South Africa, allowing a little in favour of the tiger.” Anyway, this information might have already been included here (this is a very long thread and I haven’t read it all), but there are some very detailed body measurements of a small sample of lions from the Central Kalahari in Botswana from a PhD thesis at Australian National University, published by Kevin MacFarlane in 2014. (I typed up the information from it out in a separate page btw - please let me know if I get any of it wrong!) The methodology used to standardise the lions’ measurements was the same as de Waal et al (2004). The 40-month old subadult lion of the de Waal paper, incidentally, weighed 190kg and had a total body length of 295cm (measured over the contours of the lion). The average weight of the males in MacFarlane’s thesis was listed as 209kg (n=7) and the females was 148kg (n=5): SM009 (2009): 222kg JM011: 200kg PM014: 206kg BM052: 229kg BM060: 188kg (a subadult lion, probably not yet full-sized - see appendix 4 and also table 3.1) MM106: 172kg (potentially another lion just shy of reaching his prime, estimated to be 4-5 years old) SM009 (2010): 246kg SF010: 172kg HF012: 152kg MF013: 107kg (a fairly young lioness, around 3.5 years old) PF015: 148kg BF053: 159kg Three additional lioness weights were mentioned but not included in the average - two of them are repeated measurements of two lionesses (MF013 & PF015) in the sample: SF009: 183kg (an extremely big lioness!) MF013 : 114kg PF015: 156kg The average head-body length (excluding the tail), chest girth and shoulder height of the males were 200cm, 122cm and 112cm respectively, and the averages of the females were 171cm, 108cm and 92cm respectively (rounded to the nearest cm). The author notes that these measurements are larger than the average Kruger lions reported by Skinner and Chimimba in 2005 (190kg and 126kg for males and females respectively), and speculates that his sample (which is quite small, after all) may simply consist of some slightly larger than average lions. It should be noted though that two of the weights from the n=7 male sample are actually the same male listed twice - the heaviest lion SM009, nicknamed “Scar” for the large scar on his mid-back from a past injury. There is a photo of him on page 80 of the thesis. Sadly he perished two years into the study, possibly killed by two intruding males from the north of his range (he was not part of a cohort himself). This lion had a body length of 205cm, a tail length of 85cm, a chest girth of 129cm and a peak weight of 246kg in 2010 (a sizeable gain of 24kg from a measurement taken the year before). The reason for this big fluctuation in size isn’t clear - was he in worse health in 2009, or did he just have a belly full of meat when measured in 2010? The next heaviest lion in the sample, BM052 “Marco” at 229kg, had smaller chest and body dimensions than Scar, but not by much. The paper mentions that Marco was darted after a 20-hour mating session with lioness BF053 “Cally”, so he likely hadn’t eaten recently. Unfortunately, I could not find any mention of adjusting for stomach content in the thesis. de Waal et al (2004), which MacFarlane followed, notes that adjusting for stomach contents based on a cat’s appearance can sometimes lead to underestimating their empty weight: “Lions gorge themselves with large quantities of prey carcass in a single meal (Schaller, 1972; Bertram, 1975). The actual mass (Smuts, 1979) or estimated mass (Bertram, 1975) of stomach contents are usually sub- tracted from the body mass of lions to give more realistic values of body mass (Bertram, 1975; Smuts et al., 1980), but often body mass of lions is not corrected for stomach content (Smuts, 1976). However, this practice to correct body mass for the remains of the last meal that might still be contained in the stomach or digestive tract may be misleading and can introduce substantial error. For example, Smuts et al. (1980) reported on a 5-year-old male lion that was in excellent physical condition and weighed 225 kg. Externally the lion would have been classed as having an above average stomach fill. However, a postmortem showed that it had an empty stomach but contained large amounts of subcutaneous and intestinal fat. In the current study both the heart girth and the abdominal girth were measured. The range of repeated heart girth measurements was only 46 mm (Table 1). In comparison the range of 164 mm for repeated measurements of abdominal girth was the largest of all 43 variables analysed. The sub-adult lion had eaten more than 84 hours prior to being measured, therefore, stomach fill could not have contributed much to the variation. However, the relatively large variation in abdominal girth between successive measurements could more likely have been ascribed to physical activities, creating movement of the intestines during the process of measuring the immobilized lion. As discussed previously, during this procedure its head, neck, body, limbs and tail were moved about and extended to facilitate measuring the different parts, which may have caused physical movement and even temporary lumping of the intestine in the lower abdomen, causing changes in abdominal girth.” Anyway, because Scar is also the heaviest lion in the sample, counting him twice skews the average upward slightly. On the other hand, there were also subadult lions included in the small sample that likely hadn’t reached their full size - I could see BM060 “Chico” weighing over 200kg in his prime if he was already 188kg as a 2-4 year old (his head-body length was 206cm, 1cm longer than Scar). It’s all an approximation anyway though really, because the weights of these cats in the wild are never static. That’s why I like distributions, ie. 170kg-250kg for most males and 100-180kg for most females, with a positive skew resulting in averages closer to the lower end (and a few lions reaching exceptional sizes above 250kg/180kg). It’s also why the various chest and body length measurements are potentially more informative, because they don’t vary so much.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
Lions in the Kruger National Park - G.L Smuts | Uptade!
Since years many debated about the weights G.L Smuts provided about the lion in Kruger NP. Let us analyze the data:  *This image is copyright of its original author The average weight males was 187.5 kg and for females 124.2 kg with a EMPTY stomach. Here again the proof:  *This image is copyright of its original author Many argued about how heavy these lions would be without stomach content? Only BETRAM can give us the answer because Smuts quotes him. 10 kg and 30 kg were also recorded. @Pckts therefore the 225 kg empty lion could be 255 kg in this case. 225 kg empty and normalnormal lions and tigers weight of 225 kg are completely different. After a personal communication I got few pictures from Betram. Here are many classes of the stomach and how much you should substract from the weight.  *This image is copyright of its original author This gives us now a good view about how much weight was substracted. Looking at the average lion I think 5-10 kg should be the normal range in this case. Adding this to the weight would result in a weight of around 195 kg for lions with a normal stomach. Without unhelathy animals... the lions would be close to 200 kg. (06-29-2021, 02:19 PM)MotherNature Wrote: Lions in the Kruger National Park - G.L Smuts | Uptade! To determine how much he'd deduct he guesstimated that impala were missing 30kgs of weight to use as the maximum amount deducted. When a bait was eaten, he'd deduct what he estimated the Lion ate from the carcass up to 30kg unless talking about the culled Lions, then he could technically view their stomach content. But regardless, it's an imperfect science, many cats old weight differently and it's hard to tell how much exactly one has eaten or not. A perfect example is a Lion like Earless who generally looks full all the time while other Lions will look much more empty. |
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