IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Slaght, J.C.; Miquelle, D.G.; Nikolaev, I.G.; Goodrich, J.; Smirnov, E.N.; Traylor-Holzer, K.; Christie, S.; Arjanova, T.; Smith, J.L.D.; Karanth, K.U. | |
| Who's king of the beasts? Historical and recent body weights of wild and captive amur tigers, with comparisons to other subspecies | |
| 2005 Book Chapter | |
We conducted a review of the historical literature on weights of Amur tigers to assess their veracity. We then use data collected during capture and immobilization of Amur tigers (Goodrich et al. 2001), as well as weights collected from dead animals (Nikolaev & Yudin 1993) in more recent times (since 1970) to compare to historical reports. However, most of the weights derived from Nikolaev & Yudin (1993), and some derived from our work, are taken from animals that have come into conflict with humans. Such "problem" animals may come into conflict as a result of poor body condition or extenuating circumstances (Chapter 23) that could be reflected in body weight. We therefore compare weights of these "problem" tigers to those of other wild individuals to determine whether problem animals are morphologically different from animals that have no known conflicts with people or livestock. We also used weights on Amur tigers collected from captive breeding programs in North American and Europe to compare to wild tigers. Although it is generally thought that captive animals, which are fed regularly and are free of the stresses of life in the wild, should weigh more than tigers in the wild, this assumption has never been validated. Because there are considerably more information on captive animals, we use these data as a basis for developing growth curves, and then assess whether such curves can be applied to wild populations. Finally, we scanned the scientific literature, as well databases of captive breeding programs, to compare weights and derive estimates of sexual dimorphism for subspecies, and consider both in relationship to what is known about ecology and social organization of tiger subspecies. |
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