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

[GuateGojira]

(11-24-2018, 02:29 AM)GreenForest Wrote: Guate, I agree Food supply is one of the factor in tiger's body mass. But, if no tiger bigger than near 200kg found in last 3 decades, then that tells different story. Big gene tigers will usually have access to larger territory, good food supply.  Do you have any record of any bigger tiger captured in RFE after 1950 till today ? If not, then it is pretty much safe to assume, maximum body mass of modern wild amur tiger is near 200kg, that is their maximum genetic capacity. But, bigger amur tiger gene pool is maintained in captivity. That has to be taken into account when we talk about amur tiger as species until captive gene pool is introduced into wild and old pre-1950 genetic diversity is brought back.

It is very hard fact, humans have done massive damage to wildlife. Amur tigers, Gir lions, ranthambore, sariska, panna and so many tiger reserves in India poachers destroyed the gene pool. Once gene pool which was evolved over many thousand years is lost, it will never come back. At-least Amur tigers have good representation of gene pool in captivity. Bengal tigers have nothing of that sort, they rely on wild.

I remember some comments from old litterature that said that Korean tigers were smaller than those from Manchuria and it seams that this is the population that survived in the Amur region. However I am not agree with that as the biggest tiger reliable recorded in this area, was a Korean tiger of 254 kg hunted by Baikov. Also Kaplanov reported a male of 240 kg in the Sikhote Alin region, so tigers of this area did reached large weights in the past.

Regarding the weights, until 2004, the heaviest male tiger recorded by scientists was teh tiger "Dale" with 205 kg. There is a report from a male of 225 kg reported by Kitchener & Yamaguchi (2010) but it was not corroborated by anyone from the Siberian Tiger Project for unknown reasons. Now with the Amur Tiger Programme, most of the male tigers recorded weighs of 200 kg or more, and the heaviest was a male called "Luke" recorded in 2011 with a mass of 212 kg; this is at the moment the heaviest Amur tiger recorded by scientists, but there is a clear tendency for higher weights in the last years, so probably scientists are going to found a male about 220 kg soon.

The average weight for the male Amur tigers from modern records is about 190 kg at this moment, that of the Bengal tigers is over 200 kg (depending if we include Sundarbans or not) and those of the Indochinese tigers is of 182 kg with a maximum of 209 kg. Reply