Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Natural Sciences, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh EH1 1JF, UK
  • 2 Institute of Tropical Biodiversity and Sustainable Development, University Malaysia Terengganu, Kuala Terengganu 21030, Malaysia
  • 3 Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, The Recanti-Kaplan Centre, Tubney House, Abingdon Road, Abingdon OX13 5QL, UK
  • 4 Negaunee Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605, USA
  • 5 Joint Directorate of the Lazovsky State Nature Reserve and the National Park «Zov Tigra», Tiger Protect Society, Primorskij Kraj, Vladivostok 692609, Russia
  • 6 Federal Scientific Centre for the Biodiversity of Terrestrial Biota of East Asia, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Primorskij Kraj, Vladivostok 690022, Russia
  • 7 Institute of Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, UK
Animals (Basel), 2023 Nov 22;13(23).
PMID: 38066967 DOI: 10.3390/ani13233616

Abstract

Zoo animals are crucial for conserving and potentially re-introducing species to the wild, yet it is known that the morphology of captive animals differs from that of wild animals. It is important to know how and why zoo and wild animal morphology differs to better care for captive animals and enhance their survival in reintroductions, and to understand how plasticity may influence morphology, which is supposedly indicative of evolutionary relationships. Using museum collections, we took 56 morphological measurements of skulls and mandibles from 617 captive and wild lions and tigers, reflecting each species' recent historical range. Linear morphometrics were used to identify differences in size and shape. Skull size does not differ between captive and wild lions and tigers, but skull and mandible shape does. Differences occur in regions associated with biting, indicating that diet has influenced forces acting upon the skull and mandible. The diets of captive big cats used in this study predominantly consisted of whole or partial carcasses, which closely resemble the mechanical properties of wild diets. Thus, we speculate that the additional impacts of killing, manipulating and consuming large prey in the wild have driven differentiation between captive and wild big cats.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.