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Weight of leopards in Indian zoos.; Min, Max and Average weight.
Topic Started: May 6 2013, 05:21 AM (2,490 Views)
ManEater
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Indian leopard from new delhi zoo.


Data from:Yohimbine antagonizes the anaesthetic effects of ketamine-xylazine in captive Indian wild felids.
by Sadanand D Sontakke, Govindhaswamy Umapathy, Sisinthy Shivaji

http://www.mendeley.com/research/yohimbine-antagonizes-anaesthetic-effects-ketamine-xylazine-captive-indian-wild-felids/#

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ManEater
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Nobody find this interesting ?
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1977marc
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I do, they are very heavy.
But maybe captive animals are fat? But still....very impressive
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Vita
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ManEater
May 10 2013, 10:23 PM
Nobody find this interesting ?
I think the other thread with the big male leopards is more interesting and informative.
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ManEater
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Hyaena: The other topic is a shot topic.

1977marc: Yes, you're right, maybe there are some obesity, but it can't be all animals.
The weight of captive lions(asian lion i think) and tigers don't look very big, so i don't think obesity can explain all.
Edited by ManEater, May 11 2013, 03:53 AM.
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chui
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ManEater, the numbers definitely seem off to me. The weight given for male leopards at 75.9kg is on the high end but still somewhat believable, however, the 68.6kg for females seems way too extreme. Unlike males, the size of female leopards actually doesn’t vary that much across their range and is usually around 35kg, so the figure given by this paper is higher than the general norm by a factor of 2 basically! IMO the maximum attainable weight for a female leopard is around 50kg, anything above would be suspect. The weights given for female lions in the excerpt also seem too high. I suspect some sort of miscalculation or typo which aren’t necessarily uncommon even in scientific journals.

Of course the females could just be really obese but even than the weight seems too high and doesn’t explain the lack of sexual dimorphism in both the lion and leopard samples (both highly dimorphic cats). Also, looking at pictures of leopards in Indian zoos they don’t generally seem overweight. In fact, captive big cats in developing countries actually tend to be smaller than their wild counterparts.

For example, the average weights of wild and captive adult male jaguars from Brazil.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11690535
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Similarly, the data below on the average of weight of captive Sri Lankan leopards suggests a similar trend. In sample one in which at least 4 and possibly 6 of the 8 adult males were wild caught the average was 63.1kg. While in sample 2 where only 1 of the 12 males was wild caught the average weight was 54kg.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2539473
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Edited by chui, May 11 2013, 05:08 AM.
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tigerburningbright
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Interesting and as others have pointed out captive animals in poorer countries (and India is a very poor country in general) may actually be smaller than their wild counterparts.

The grossly overweight captive animals would be much more likely found in the wealthy 1st world (USA/Canada/Europe/Australia/New Zealand)

Interesting through how little of a size difference between Male/Female Asian Lions/Leopards in this captive study....Especially for the Lions considering Lions seem to have highly competitive mating/reproductive strategies among Males which generally leads to large sexual dimorphism in the species.
Edited by tigerburningbright, May 11 2013, 06:29 AM.
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ImperialDino
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In captivity, Amur Tigers females are usually about HALF the size of the males.
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ManEater
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I agree chui, the female leopard's weight is strange, and somewhat unbelievable, i have noticed this too, because very high, but this source seems reliable so i am quite confused.
Edited by ManEater, May 11 2013, 10:27 PM.
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Gregoire
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Impressive
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