ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

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Hi peter,

Tiger-05 (09414) is an early specimen collected before the 1957. Although the measurement method in<FAUNA SINICA>is between pegs, I personally believe that this does not necessarily mean that it was measured in this way at the time.Although the body measurements, including hind foot length, are indeed very large

On the Chinese Internet, I have also seen that some animal fans will communicate with biologists to obtain tiger size data, but some informations are usually difficult to confirm, and I am cautious about this before the official publication.Of course, this does not mean that Amur tigers with such a huge weight do not exist now. I can share some information that I know.

Firstly, we all know that weight can easily change. The Amur tiger named 'dale' captured by WCS has a weight variation of nearly 30 kilograms, and this situation is even more exaggerated among different individuals. 

The Tiger-04, AMNH85396, and AMNH85404 mentioned above are very similar in terms of skull size, skeleton size, and body measurement data, but individual weight differences can reach 30-80kg. I have communicated with some paleontologists who have measured these materials at AMNH, and the data obtained from them shows that even the heaviest AMNH85404, weighing nearly 250kg, has no significant difference in the attachment crest of the deltoid and pectoral muscles on its humerus compared to AMNH85396. It is not a significantly strong tiger.

So my point of view is that in many cases, weight is just one of the reference values for evaluating body size (the size of the skeleton is also important). There are not many opportunities to measure the weight of wild Amur tigers, so in some cases, the tiger's weight can only represent its weight at the time of capture

From what I have learned about tiger conservation agencies in China and Russia, they usually do not weigh tigers, especially in China. In the Russian Far East region, in recent years, tigers with serious health problems and wandering too close to human settlements in peripheral areas have usually been captured and weighed. It is obvious that the weight values of these homeless and unhealthy individuals are not high.

In China, in recent years, there have been two confirmed wild male Amur tigers weighing 270kg+and 225kg. The former is an individual mentioned by Professor Feng Limin during an online event on World Tiger Day a few years ago, and there are some message claiming that this individual was measured because of the accidental death. 

Another individual weighing 225kg is a young male tiger who was captured for invading human settlements. The local forestry bureau reported a weight of 225kg at the time of release. I think these two numbers are accurate.

In fact, Professor Feng Limin has mentioned more than once that he has seen tigers weighing over 250kg, and reference materials suggest that theoretically the largest wild Amur tiger can reach nearly 300kg. However, his main work does not include measuring the morphological data of tigers, but rather conducting ecological observations and field investigations of national parks.

In recent years, I have learned from my personal observations, news reports, and exchanges with tiger conservation workers. The number of Amur tigers in China has significantly increased, and the frequency of encounters between humans and tigers has gradually increased. 

In a graduate thesis on tiger ecology research in national parks about 8 years ago (2017), there was a significant gap in the number and proportion of tiger prey species in China compared to Russia. However, there has been significant progress in recent years, or in the future, I will discuss in detail the current situation and existing problems of Amur tiger conservation in my opinion.

Hartstone Rose's research does not provide detailed specimen information of tigers. You can access AMNH's online database, which is publicly available. However, sometimes for maintenance purposes, it may go offline.This is the website of the database

https://www.amnh.org/research/vertebrate...n/database

There may be significant differences in body size between captive and wild Amur tigers, but in my opinion, this should depend on the method of captive breeding. I obtained skeleton data of a total of 11 adult male(both wild and captive) Amur tigers from literature and communication. The smallest three were captive individuals, and the largest three were also captive individuals. They were samples from PER CHRISTIANSEN.

As far as I know, in some Amur tiger themed zoos in China, they have specialized breeding lineages and plans for large Amur tiger individuals. Therefore, in the case where these large individuals are used as artificial breeding fathers, they may indeed have some body size differences from naturally bred wild counterparts.

In my opinion, there doesn't seem to be any significant difference in size between the skull of the Amur tiger and the skull of the Bengal tiger. Zoologists only noticed the Amur tiger in the mid-19th century, and as far as I know, the skull of an adult Amur tiger scientifically measured in the 19th century is only a normal size individual of 345mm, which came from present-day Jilin Province, China. And there was no good statistical data for several decades until the 1940s. As Pocock said, the Amur tiger may be larger than the Bengal tiger, but there is no evidence. Since the 1940s, the Amur tiger in the Russian Far East has been facing a very serious endangered problem. So, I don't think there is any evidence to trace back the size of the Amur tiger in history. Although from the measurements of zoologists, it seems that the largest Amur tiger skull is always slightly larger than the Bengal tiger skull Reply