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

[WaveRiders]

EVELYN ARTHUR SMYTHIES
 
“ … served in the Indian Forest Service from 1908 until 1940, based in Nainital. He was Chief Conservator of the Forest of Nepal from 1940 through 1947…”

 
What does it mean? The following is what happened and what in my opinion might have implicated.
 
Smythies was employed by the British Government of India for 32 years. He made a good job and was well respected. At some point in the late 1930s the Maharajah Juddha Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana ruling the Kingdom of Nepal realized he needed an experienced person to manage the Nepal forestry. In 1940 he therefore offered thorough one of his Minister the position of Chief Conservator to Smythies luring him from his at that time current employer (with whom the Maharajah was in good relationship) by offering him a very high salary and a promotion. Smythies, at the end of his professional career, after some time of negotiation of course accepted being eternally grateful to the Maharajah for the great professional opportunity. He therefore secured himself a golden retirement and to demonstrate his gratitude to the Maharajah he immediately started to write a book dedicated to the Maharajah to celebrate and exalt his supposed bravery (the book is completely filled of this servile attitude and the credibility of Smythies inevitably paid a price within the British circles).
 
I do not absolutely want to blindly discredit Smythies and Smythies (second hand) records as the man was a very good professional and a very well educated man (above I used the word “might have implicated”). However we should keep in mind that his book is in good part based on the memories written in the Maharajah diaries by somebody else. Particularly many of the sensational occurrences have not been experiences by himself. The cut given by Smythies to his book “Big Game Shooting in Nepal” is different from the book narrating the memories of the Maharajah of Cooch Behar and his hunting records. In this latter book there is much less sensationalism on the feats of the Maharajah and the data included are a true treasure of homogeneous (but not random) hunting records among big cats probably unparalleled and rivalled only at most by those of Almeida for the Pantanal Jaguar and, to a lesser extent, by those of Stevenson-Hamilton for Kruger lion body dimensions (both again homogeneous but not random).
 
Smythies did not witness the vast majority of Maharajah hunts He started to work for the Maharajah in late 1940 and the book was published in 1942. By that year the Maharajah had been hunting for decades and his largest and heaviest tigers had already been bagged. This was the case for the 705 lb / 10 ft 9 in tiger of which it is evident that Smythies was NOT a witness.
 
Smythies did not participate to the very most of the hunting stories narrated in his book. He did not personally measure the vast majority of the tigers shot by the Maharajah (if any at all) and he did not even witness most of them being shot (for instance those 3 exceptionally large tigers 10 ft 2 in, 10 ft 5 in and 10 ft 9 inches killed in 3 consecutive days were shot in 1933, 7 years before Smithies joined the Maharajah court).
 
He is therefore a second hand source and when he writes that “all measurements recorded in this book are round the curves … and are absolutely accurate” or “no exaggeration in possible, as it is written under his (His Highness) personal direction” we do not commit to blindly trust Smithies, but nearly always somebody else (a Maharajah shikar, a Maharajah writer and the Maharajah in person).
 
However Smythies may in theory have participated to some tiger hunts in Nepal before 1940 as a guest and he definitely did from late 1940 onwards as a Chief Conservator of Nepal Forests, but it is evident from the narration of his book that he is nearly always reporting records and memories written by somebody else (a Maharajah court writer) somewhere else (the Maharajah hunting diaries). It also seems that several of the pictures shown in his book (of which Smythies had copyright) were a donation from the Maharajah. When the Maharajah Juddha Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana (1875-1952, Head of Rana dynasty, Maharajah and Prime Minister of Nepal during 1932-1945) is pictured as still looking not too old (earlier then 66 years old), the picture (or the painting) evidently could not have been taken by Smythies unless in that circumstance he had been invited to the hunt in Nepal from Nainital. The picture with the record 9 ft 8 in tigress and the 10 ft 8 in tiger might have been witnessed by Smythies.
 
An example of one of the hunts he appears to have attended:
 
(from Smythies book) On January 17 : “The good luck of this magnificent shoot still held, and bag to-day totally 4 fully-grown tigers all within an inch or two of 10 feet (round the curves).
 
Therefore hunts bagging male tigers as long as 9 ft 10 in and 9ft 11 in round the curves were considered of good luck.
 
And even if Smythies measured by himself some of the very largest tigers shot by the Maharajah I remind what Dumbar Brander wrote in his book Wild Animals in Central India in 1923.
 

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

 
CONCLUSION ON SMYTHIES, THE 705 lb WEIGHT AND OTHER RECORDS
 
The above is what anyone can understand just from the few pages scanned by peter if using, in my opinion, a bit of brain and fair judgment. If one read the whole book (and not only a few parts) it is possible to understand a lot more and apply in case a filter to some information based on individual judgment.
 
At the end anyone is free to understand what he wants (from the hearth if biased and not driven by science only) and what he can (from the brain). Just to be clear I state that I do not blindly reject Smythies records. My major point is that I do not definitely like at all the servile way he presents them and, even for this attitude, I am definitely cautious in accepting a few of them as fully trustable, in particular the 705 lb individual (the records, not the theoretical possibility for instance that a really exceptional wild Nepalese/Indian male tiger could actually weigh 320 kg particularly if fully gorged, an occurrence however still scientifically far from being ascertained). The 705 lb individual and a few other records are definitely hunting records NOT comparable to those reported by independent professionals and writers like Brander, Hewett and (very) few others as well as those by the Maharajah of Cooch Behar (and not because I am applying two weights and two measurements for Maharajahs as I explained why).
 
I remind that the largest and biggest tiger from Brander, by far the largest tiger possibly to be considered accurately and reliably measured in historic records has been reported with a head-and-body length of 2210 mm between pegs. It was a truly monster tiger and if he was not a Brander or an Hewett or a Corbett describing him I would definitely reject the hunting record with no hesitation as for me it is a big stretch for my considerations (as for instance the accurate and reliable second and third largest tigers are markedly smaller). This cattle-killer tiger was described as extremely bulky and with a big ridge of fat 100-130 mm deep running all along from the throat to the belly. Yet Brander estimated it at “about 600 lb” (272 kg) giving the feeling that for him it was already an extreme weight to conceive. Now how compare Brander’s largest tiger with the 705 lb Nepal tiger that, additionally, Smythies never saw?
 
Was Brander somewhat too conservative in the weight estimate (as it appears to me)? Was what reported by a truly honest, trustable and experienced professional and jungle man who saw hundreds of tigers shot in years, late 1800 / early 1900, when there were still plenty animals roaming around the true reality? As I do not believe in the Lockness Monster, Bigfoot, Yeti, Chupacabra and 12+ foot tigers (even if measured over curves) neither now nor 200 years ago I believe it was.
 
 
LITERATURE REPORTING THE 705 lb WEIGHT
 
The 705 lb tiger from Smythies book became known to the very vast majority of the public when Schaller (1967) and then Wood (1972) reported the record as Perry (1964), surprisingly, had missed it. Since then some other authors quoted this weight and some more perhaps will follow.
 
The importance of what it really means accept it or not is up to anyone to realize it. I do consider the 705 lb record in a few of my analyses under particular circumstances as ultimate tiger weight, but when things start to get serious I refrain using it as well as all hunting records in excess of scientifically proved weights. My scientifically proved weight limit for tigers is the (estimated) not-adjusted 261 kg figure from Smith et al. (1983) or that sort of messy 272+ kg not-adjusted weight coming from the Sauaraha M105 and M026 Nepal tigers in Dinerstein (2003).
 
By words or in popular and semi-scientific books all zoologists with expertise in big cats never rule out the possibility of existence of exceptionally wild big Bengal tiger weighing now or in the past 300 kg or more. However you will never find a zoologist reporting the 320 kg male tiger from Smythies in a peer-reviewed scientific paper or in a peer-reviewed scientific book clearly stating it is the highest accurate and reliable weight of a wild (Bengal) tiger. And this even knowing that they would not be shot by accepting the record as it is the least of the problem in the very most of circumstances of the professional zoology world.
 
The point is that by definition only an occurrence recorded by a professional scientist and presented and discussed in a peer-reviewed scientific paper or in a peer-reviewed scientific book is scientific evidence and prove. That is the way science works and being a man of science I fully agree with the procedure of course.
 

VRATISLAV MAZAK
 
Vratislav Mazak is the perfect demonstration of how even just some fanaticism can overshadow a clever professional mind. He wanted to demonstrate that the Amur tiger was the largest tiger subspecies and he made everything he could to do that, mixing reliable and unreliable sources, wild and captive specimens, omitting skulls and other data, mixing measurement methods and so on. If a professional zoologist has been able to do that (although during the Cold War and from the other side of the Berlin Wall), it is not a surprise to see what can do the layman in popular contests either in the web and elsewhere.
 
However I have to say that I do own a lot of my initial scientific knowledge of tigers to Vratislav Mazak and I am therefore grateful to him.


                                     WaveRiders

 

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