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Home News World

Who is Smarter? Lions vs Tigers

BCR by BCR
September 16, 2009
in News World
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[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090911145030.htm]

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.

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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.

01249.x

Adapted from materials provided by University of Oxford.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090911145030.htm


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One response to “Who is Smarter? Lions vs Tigers”

  1. Ross Wind says:
    September 28, 2020 at 4:21 pm

    The 2009 Big cat rescue tiger intelligence article needs an update because it is scientifically proven incorrect.
    The lion is more intelligent. If we read the list of the most intelligent mammalian, we see mainly social animals. Why it would be different with the tiger? The lion is a social animal therefore have more to learn than the loner tiger.
    At the announce of the tiger’s relative bigger brain in 2009, it was said there was no proven relation between brain size and intelligent. If it was the case, women have smaller brains, therefore are less intelligent than men. This is an old Darwinian belief. Darwin said that because black men and women have in average smaller skull, they were less intelligent than the white man. The relation brain size and intelligence are not supported by facts. According to some studies in university women have in average better marks than men.
    The lion a social animal is the most intelligent cat. In test the tiger had the biggest brain but came last in intelligent tests. Plus, the social animals the hyena and the lion did better than the loner leopard and tiger.
    https://www.quora.com/Which-cat-is-smarter-a-lion-or-a-tiger/answer/Ross-Wind?__nsrc__=4&__snid3__=12196476945
    The 2016 Scientific American test
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lions-are-the-brainiest-of-the-big-cats/
    The Nature magazine 2018 lion IQ tests
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpNJU8I4MhM

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