Who is the "king" of tigers? - Bengal or Amur

[GuateGojira]

Yes, genetically speaking, modern Amur tigers are in relative bad conditions, but thank God, they are still able to sustain a viable population. The captive population of Amur tigers, which is about the same that the wild one, have more genetic variety and could be used, in the long therm, to re-introduce new genes to the population. However, the new tigers that are now living in the southern reserves of Russia and China, seems to be "larger" than those of the Sikhote Alin region. Check that the largest male in that region was 205 kg, while the Russian scientists that capture tigers in the Ussuri and the China frontier have found three males that have surpassed that weight in less than 4 years. These new generation of tigers seems something new, I hope.

The genetic depression probably affected them more on healthy issues (like resistance to canine distemper or other sickness, I think...) than in morphological issues. There are very large tigers captured by the Siberian Tiger Project and The Amur Tiger Programme that could have skulls of 370-380 cm, the problem is the robusticity and the weight, in that part they are very slender, compared with Bengal tigers.

Other thing is prey numbers, remember that the tiger in Sikhote Alin are normally described as "smaller" than those of the Manchuria region where prey is more abundant. Probably, with better prey base and with no need of new genes, the modern Amur tigers will rise again to they former glory. I hope that, from the bottom of my heart. [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]
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