[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090911145030.htm] Show ScienceDaily (Sep. 13, 2009) — A wide-ranging study of big cat skulls, led by Oxford University scientists, has shown that tigers have bigger brains, relative to their body size, than lions, leopards or jaguars. The team investigated the relationship between the skull size – the longest length between the front and back parts of the skull – of a large sample of tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars and the volume inside the cats' respective craniums. The researchers report their findings in this month's Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 'What we had not expected is that the tiger has clearly much bigger relative brain size than do the other three species, which all have similar relative brain sizes,' said Dr Nobby Yamaguchi of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), an author of the report with WildCRU Director Professor David Macdonald. ‘When we compare the two biggest species, on average the lion has a bigger skull than the tiger based on the greatest length of the skull. However, the tiger has bigger cranial volume than the lion. It is truly amazing that tiny female Balinese tiger skulls have cranial volumes as large as those of huge male southern African lion skulls.' It has sometimes been assumed that social species, such as lions, should have larger brains than solitary species, such as tigers, because of the need to handle a more complex social life within groups or prides. However, despite a few studies suggesting a relationship between big brains and sociality in mammals, evidence for the link is far from clear. Dr Nobby Yamaguchi said: 'Our results strongly suggest that there is no detectable positive relationship between relative brain size and sociality amongst these four big cat species, which shared a common ancestor around 3.7 million years ago.' The team also looked at the popular idea that tigers are 'bigger' than lions (which could mean that the tiger's relatively bigger brain size simply reflects its bigger body). However, careful re-evaluation of original field data and relatively well-documented hunting records does not support this idea. So the team concluded that the tigers have a relatively bigger brain (around 16 per cent larger) than lions, given their very similar average body sizes. Professor Macdonald said: 'Two general lessons emerge from our findings: first, how much remains to be discovered about even these most familiar of big cats, and second how important museum collections can be as a source of unexpected insights.' The next step for the researchers is to try to answer whether such a difference can be explained by intrageneric variation or merely by chance. If not by chance, then it raises the question why the tiger evolved a relatively bigger brain (or why other species evolved smaller brains) after the tiger’s ancestor split from the common ancestor to the other three species. The answers to both these questions may lie in analysing comparative brain anatomy amongst these species (for instance, which parts of the tiger’s brain are bigger than the lion's) and similar data from extinct relatives of these big cats as well as smaller living relatives such as the snow leopard and clouded leopard. ———————- Journal reference: Yamaguchi et al. 'Brain size of the lion (Panthera leo) and the tiger (P. tigris): implications for intrageneric phylogeny, intraspecific differences and the effects of captivity. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009; 98 (1): 85 DOI: 10.1111/j.1095-8312.2009. Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue http://www.BigCatRescue.org Until Sept. 27, 2009 you can vote once a day for Scott Lope, our Operations's manager, to win Animal Planet's Hero of the Year Award. As many of you already know, Scott had a career in medicine, but gave it up to be a full time volunteer and then staff at Big Cat Rescue. You can see a video of him in action rescuing all kinds of animals in addition to the care he provides the big cats at Big Cat Rescue on our web site at http://www.BigCatRescue.org Please help him win as this is great publicity for the plight of big cats and it will provide $10,000 in cash to feed the cats at Big Cat Rescue as well as a much needed vacation for Scott. Your DAILY vote can win this for us here: http://animal.discovery.com/roar/hero-of-the-year/vote/ Until Sept. 20, 2009 you can vote daily for Big Cat Rescue in facebook's contest where your votes have gotten us into the last round of top 4 charities to win $50,000 in co branded advertising. Please vote DAILY here and ask your friends to do the same: http://apps.facebook.com/voteforacause/ Free ways to join us and help the big cats: Twitter: Follow Me and be invited to enter our Animal Lover's Dream Vacation Giveaway! http://twitter.com/BigCatRescue This message contains information from Big Cat Rescue that may be confidential or privileged. The information contained herein is intended Is a lion smarter than a cat?In fact, lions are the smartest species of all big cats. In several task-solving experiments, lions were able to outperform all other felines. Researchers believe that social life is the key to the lion's advantage over other big cats and that social intelligence results in higher cognitive ability.
Are tigers better or lions?So, the short answer is that in battles between lions and tigers, tigers have generally held the upper hand and won in fights.
Why are lions better than tigers?In terms of bone strength, lions are stronger. Tigers are ~60-70% muscle but have lower bone density than lions. In terms of muscular strength, tigers are stronger.
Are lions more intelligent than dogs?Based on the number of neurons found, they speculated that dogs have roughly the same intelligence as raccoons and lions, while domestic cats have comparable intelligence to bears. For comparison, humans have by far the highest number of neurons in our cerebral cortexes—as many as 16 billion per person.
|
Are lions or tigers more intelligent?
direito autoral © 2024 cemle Inc.
