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

[GuateGojira]

Comparison image:

This is it, here is my final statement about this topic: the comparison of size.

Check my new image:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Here I made a comparison between the Amur and the Bengal tiger, using modern and historic measurements. The explanation is this:

1. Amur tiger:
The body measurements in the image are only those of Kerley et al. (2005). Why I did not post those of the historic specimens? Well, because although they are reliable in they description, many of them don't came from first hand sources, so I decided to use only those from scientific references. Besides, apart from the giant male of 330 cm from Mazák, all the other specimens are of the same size than modern animals, except in the chest department. On the side of the weights, the source is my new document of 2015, already posted here.

2. Bengal tiger:
On the department of body size, I choose to use Brander and the Maharaha of Cooch Behar, as they measured between pegs and are the most reliable with the largest samples. I also used those from Dr Sunquist (1981), although all the specimens fit in the ranges of the two previous sources, except for female T-107, which is the longest female recorded in Nepal-India (282 cm). On the weight side, I used my new document for Bengal tigers, also from 2015, which summarize most of the reliable weights, including Hewett, for example. I will post the images latter. The change here is that I separated the "old" weights from the "new" scientific weights, in order to see the differences in time. On the body size department, both historic and new measurements are the same, so there is no problem in using both, although we most take in count that the smaller figures in the old records probably came from young specimens, that in modern records simply don't exist.

At the end, like I said before, we can see in the images that although there are differences in the "paper" of barely 5 to 10 cm, when we see the two animals (of average size) together, they are practically of the same size, although the Bengal one is more robust in comparison. I expect to be criticized by the Amur-tiger-fans, but they most accept the fact that the measurements and weights presented, support the fact that Bengal are the heaviest cats on Earth right now and that they are of the same body size, both historically and modern, and between the two subspecies.

Greetings to all. [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]
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