ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - B - THE LION (Panthera leo)

[GuateGojira]

(10-16-2019, 03:08 AM)lionjaguar Wrote: How about lions of Tsavo? I also heard Tsavo lions are very big too

Good question. In fact, this is a myth based in the measurements of the two man-eater lions published by Patterson. However Dr Bruce Patterson (not related with the british guy) made an study of these lions and presented his results in his book "The Lions of Tsavo". He shows that based on skulls the lions of that area are of the same size than the other lions from East Africa, in fact the largest skull was about 375 mm in total length (figure 9 in page 114) and in page 115 he says that he saw a skull of only 13.5 inches long (34.3 cm) that apparently belonged to the largest lion that William Mukabane (a KWS ranger in Voi) ever encounter, a man that shot more than 220 lions in his career, most in the greater Tsavo ecosystem.

Also, in page 32 Patterson got to the conclution that those huge measurements for the two man-eaters (295 cm long x 114 cm tall for the first male and 290 cm long x 121 cm tall for the second one) were taken "along the curves", as a comparison of the skulls of these animals with those of other lions do not support the claim of they large size. In the Figure 9 in page 114, the two skulls from the Tsavo Maneaters, plus the skull of the "huge" Mfuwe maneater were included. However if we see, the three skulls measure c.364 mm, c.358 mm and c.354 mm respectivelly. So none of them is a big specimen, and this shows that the length of 320 cm published for the big Mfuwe lion was also taked along the curves and probably pressing the tape in the back a lot; if this last lion looks huge in the museum, we must remember that the skin and mounts of animals normally do not show the real size of the specimens, as the skin can be stretched, shrinked and most of the time need to be modified at some degree for the mount.

It seems that the idea presented that those lions, the "buffalo" lions as Mr Caputo stated in his book "Ghosts of Tsavo", is just an ilusion propagated by the legent of the maneaters of the region. Reply