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| Asian Elephants stronger than African Elephants?!?! | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 5 2012, 10:27 PM (9,199 Views) | |
| blaze | Oct 15 2015, 05:14 AM Post #61 |
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Carnivore
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@tigerr If that's how it reads to you then sorry, I wasn't very clear, what I meant is that maybe there are some factors (not exclusively the forest having denser vegetation, notice I mentioned other factors) that make asian forest bovids be larger not only than african forest bovids but african savannah bovids, such factors might not affect elephants, after all bovids and elephants have different ways of digesting plant matter, however as I acknowledged before I don't have any solid evidence that is the case so I have no problems in saying 'I'm wrong" and abandoning that idea. |
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| pckts | Oct 16 2015, 02:11 AM Post #62 |
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Heterotrophic Organism
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![]() Thats a Bull with female Asian for comparison "Modern Asian Elephants have a closer genetic connection to pre-historic Columbian Mastodons than they do to modern African Elephants." I thought that statement above was interesting I saw Africans from kruger and Asians at the San Diego Safari Park and LA Zoo, the asian were closer so they looked larger but the africans were obviously huge as well, just much further away. Im sure when trying to decide who's stronger its going to be splitting hairs and you're obviously going to lean towards the one with a significant weight advantage most likely. ![]() ![]() All Females together ![]() Youngsters playing together |
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| Warsaw2014 | Jan 8 2017, 05:02 AM Post #63 |
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Herbivore
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"There is a strong belief that Asian elephants are much heavier than African elephants of the same shoulder height (Roth 1990; Christiansen 2004; Lister and Stuart 2010). This concept has developed because the body mass data obtained for E. maximus has generally been taken from captive individuals (zoo and circus animals). Comparing the weights obtained from E. maximus by several authors (Benedict 1936; Wood 1981; Christiansen 2004) with the data from wild and captive animals under optimal nutritional conditions (Sukumar et al. 1988; Kurt and Kumarasinghe 1998), it can be stated that the generally used data came from clearly obese animals, some specimens from Benedict (1936) and Christiansen (2004) are up to 60–85% heavier than elephants of the same shoulder height in good conditions (see Kurt and Kumarasinghe 1998). An average-sized male E. maximus (275 cm), in optimal conditions, is about 4000 kg and an average fully grown female elephant (non-pregnant) is around 2700 kg (Sukumar et al. 1988; Kurt and Kumarasinghe 1998). The fact is that E. maximus is only slightly heavier than L. africana. It is true that E. maximus has a proportionally broader pelvis and more compact body than the African elephant, but L. africana has a more elongated body. This means that there are no significant differences in body mass between E. maximus and L. africana of the same shoulder height. These differences are mainly due to the fact that it is not possible to compare both species in the same conditions. A 275 cm male E. maximus is a fully grown individual, while a male L. africana of this shoulder height is a sub-adult animal and is not as robust as a fully mature individual (see Hanks 1972). Therefore the African elephant would be less heavy. But if we compare both species at 300 cm, both of them will attain nearly the same body mass of about 5000 kg, because the Asian elephant gets more slender at this shoulder height (due to allometry, see below) and the African elephant gets broader because it is nearly a fully-grown animal" "Exceptionally tall individuals and allometry.—Among modern animals there is a very small percentage of record-sized individuals. These specimens are extremely rare, usually there is one among hundreds of thousands, or even millions. With regard to modern elephants, record-sized specimens are about 25% taller than average. The tallest Elephas maximus on record was a huge male shot in Assam, India, in 1924. Using the conventional method of multiplying the forefoot circumference by two (Wood 1982; Sukumar et al. 1988), it was estimated to be 343 cm at the shoulders (Pillai 1941; Wood 1982). A few more individuals of this size category have been reported in recent history (Wood 1982; Lister and Blashford-Snell 1999). On the other hand, the tallest Loxodonta africana bulls on record probably reached 400 cm at the shoulders (Wood 1982). The largest, accurately-measured African bush elephant was a gigantic bull shot in Angola in 1974 (Ward et al. 1975; Wood 1982; Haynes 1991). Its forefoot circumference was measured at 180 cm (Wood 1982), indicating a shoulder height of 396 cm. The shoulder height of mature L. africana can be calculated by multiplying the circumference of the forefoot by 2, plus 10% (Wood 1982). The projected line from the highest point of the scapula of this individual to the base of the extended forefoot, whilst lying on its side, was measured at 417 cm, again indicating a shoulder height of about 396 cm. There is a difference of about 5% between the standing and lying shoulder height of extant elephants because the great weight tends to spread the body out laterally (Shoshani et al. 1982 contra Hanks 1972; Wood 1982). However, important calculation errors could have been made in several record-sized specimens. In November 1955 an enormous elephant (popularly known as Fenykovi) was shot in the same area. This one was measured at 401 cm on its side, suggesting its size to be 381 cm at the shoulders (Wood 1982). This specimen is stored at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and catalogued as USNM 304615. The postcranial long-bone diaphyseal lengths of this specimen (Roth 1990) show an animal nearly 10% taller than Jumbo (AMNH 3283), indicating a shoulder height in the flesh of about 350 cm and 7.5 tonnes of body mass, very far from previous estimates of 31 cm (381 cm) in shoulder height and nearly 3.5 tonnes (10.9 tonnes) in body mass (Wood 1982). The biggest African elephants on record are usually estimated to be up to 12 tonnes of body mass (Wood 1982; Paul 1997). These estimates correspond to an isometric growth, but land animals change their proportions as they grow and tend to become more robust and massive as they become bigger. This is true for most land mammals. Mature elephants attain greater body mass than sub-adult individuals of the same shoulder height (see Kurt and Kumarasinghe 1998), and in African elephants over 30 years of age the height increases much less than the weight (Hanks 1972). Therefore, proboscideans tend to become stockier as they mature (there can be exceptions to this rule depending on nutritional conditions and other factors). Does this mean that exceptionally tall bulls are proportionally heavier? Or, at least, relatively as heavy as fully grown average-sized specimens? Probably not. It is known that in Namibia, where exceptionally tall elephants survive, they have relatively longer legs (Wood 1982), indicating a negative body mass allometry in unusually tall elephants; they are relatively less heavy compared to the shoulder height as they have longer legs, and therefore relatively shorter and narrower bodies. Therefore, a strong negative allometry is also expected for oversized elephants. Gould (1966) also observed an intraspecific mandible size decrease vs. body length in Lucanus mearesi, in specimens above average. It is also known that larger animals have a general tendency toward shorter torso relative to the width and head length vs. body length relationships, which almost always show negative allometry due to the relatively decreasing brain size (Gould 1966). These same results can be observed in very tall humans, where a relatively long arm and leg length vs. torso length is a rule, as is a relatively small head size. This is due to the decreasing brain weight/ body size relation... more: https://app.pan.pl/archive/published/app61/app001362014.pdf |
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| animalkingdom | Jan 11 2017, 02:59 PM Post #64 |
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Omnivore
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At same weight def asian elephant,on average african bish elephant are larger therefore stronger. |
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| Finderskeepers | Jan 11 2017, 06:40 PM Post #65 |
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Omnivore
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Mebbe square cube law? Applied to the muscles? |
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