African lion vs Yellowstone grizzly

[0ldgrizz]

A mature male African lion vs mature male Yellowstone grizzly. The lion weighs 400 pounds and the grizzly 500 pounds ( summer weight ), each an average specimen. They are standing face to face and they each want a leftover wolf kill.

African Lion - Panthera leo
Panthera leo is a large feline, which can range in size from 83 kg (females) at minimum and 225 kg (males) at maximum, with males generally being 50% bigger. The mean mass for males is 187 kg and for cubs 5 kg. Females range in size from 83-168 kg and males from 145-225 kg. On average, females range from 119-140 kg and males from 175-193 kg depending on the location. Some males can even weigh up tp 250 kg. Lions are carnivores, who generally prefer medium size ungulates, but they also eat birds, hares, ostrich eggs, phytons, fish, crocodiles and even other lions. They have been recorded attacking pretty much everything ranging from 2-1000 kg, tough ungultates make up 90% of the killed prey, but especially in the kalahari, they have to show flexibility for surviving. For the killing, lions are equipped with 6 cm long canines and a solidly built, 25.7 cm long skull. For its bite force, the lion has massive zygomatic arches and a large sagittal crest for the attachment of powerful jaw and neck muscles. The prefered prey size of the lion depends on it's habitat, but they usually prefer prey with a weight of 350 kg. The prefered weight range is 190-550 kg (in the serengeti 170-250 kg), animals out of that range are usually avoided.


Yellowstone grizzly - Ursus arctos horribilis
The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America. It can weigh from 170 to 770 kilograms (350 to 1700 lbs) and its largest subspecies, the Kodiak Bear, is second only to the polar bear as the largest member of the bear family and as the largest land-based predator. There are several recognized subspecies within the brown bear species. In North America, two types are generally recognized, the coastal brown bear and the inland grizzly, and the two types could broadly define all brown bear subspecies. Grizzlies weigh as little as 350 lb (159 kg) in Yukon, while a brown bear, living on a steady, nutritious diet of spawning salmon, from Coastal Alaska and Russia can weigh 1500 lb (682 kg). The exact number of overall brown subspecies remains in debate. The brown bear is primarily nocturnal. In the summer, it gains up to 180 kilograms (400 lb) of fat, on which it relies to make it through winter, when it becomes very lethargic. Although they are not full hibernators, and can be woken easily, both sexes like to den in a protected spot such as a cave, crevice, or hollow log during the winter months. Brown bears are mostly solitary, although they may gather in large numbers at major food sources and form social hierarchies based on age and size. Adult male bears are particularly aggressive and are avoided by adolescent and subadult males. Female bears with cubs rival adult males in aggression and more intolerant of other bears than single females. Young adolescent males tend to be least aggressive and have been observed making non-agonistic interactions with each other. In his Great Bear Almanac, Gary Brown lists 11 different sounds bears produce in 9 different contexts. Sounds expressing anger or aggravation include growls, roars, woofs, champs and smacks while sounds expressing nervousness or pain include woofs, grunts and bawls. Sows will bleat or hum when communicating with their cubs. The mating season is from late May to early July. Being serially monogamous, brown bears remain with the same mate from several days to a couple of weeks. Females mature sexually between the age of 5 and 7 years, while males usually mate a few years later when they are large and strong enough to successfully compete with other males for mating rights.Males however take no part in raising their cubs – parenting is left entirely to the females.

[creature386]

Just expanded the OP a bit. I of course couldn't resist using the sentences and pictures in our own profiles. And I just noticed that my old profiles are so poorly written…

[0ldgrizz]

The Works of Theodore Roosevelt - volume 4 of 14.

How the prowess of the grisly compares with that of the lion or tiger would be hard to say; I have never shot rather of the latter myself, and my brother, who has killed tigers in India, has never had a chance at a grisly. Any one of the big bears we killed on the mountains would, I should think, have been able to make short work of either a lion or a tiger; for the grisly is greatly superior in bulk and muscular power to either of the great cats, and its teeth are as large as theirs, while its claws, though blunter, are much longer; never-the-less, I believe that a lion or a tiger would be fully as dangerous to a hunter or other human being, on account of the superior speed of its charge, the lighting-like rapidity of its movements, and its apparently sharper senses. Still,, after all id said, the man should have a thoroughly trustworthy weapon and a fairly cool head who would follow into his own haunts and slay Old Ephraim.

The above is quoted by Teddy Roosevelt in his early years, before traveling abroad. After experiencing lion hunting in Africa, TR made this statement: Teddy Roosevelt once stated that a stripped carcass of a grizzly bear is far more robust than the same of a lion . The bear is just more powerfully and larger built .

[0ldgrizz]

The Bear Almanac by Gary Brown.

A fight was staged in Monterrey, Mexico, between a large California grizzly bear and a man-killing African lion. The grizzly bear, according to Storer and Tevis, handled the African king as a cat would a rat. The conflict was over so quickly that the spectators hardly realized how it was accomplished.

The Grizzly almanac by Robert H. Busch.

In a sad variation on the theme, in the 1920s, one of the last California grizzlies was sent to Monterrey, Mexico where it was set against an African lion. It was reported that the bear "killed him so quickly that the big audience hardly knew how it was done." The fate of the victorious bear was not mentioned.

[blaze]

I wonder how true those stories are, I'm Mexican and I live in the north, never heard of such stories though I have seen the state of some circus animals which brings me doubts on the health be it physical and physiological of animals made to participate in staged fights of that kind, specially in the less "animal friendly" early 20th century.

Adult male Grizzlies actually average ~420lbs. Check the weighs here (page 559) the only place where they average over 440lbs is in dump-rich Yellowstone and in two places where the weights were adjusted to represent fall weights.

On top of them being actually similar in weight, adult male brown bears actually vary their body fat percentage from 20% in spring to 33% in the fall (Schwartz et al., 2014), while lions have body fat percentages of <10%, this goes some ways to explain why even though average male grizzlies have masses similar to male lions, their straight line head-body length is like that of a lioness (155cm), most of it is all fat. At parity (and average vs average too) this has to go to the cat, IMO.

[0ldgrizz]

Those weights are not accurate in mature male grizzlies. When naturalists dart bears for annual check-ups, it is to check out the health of grizzly populations. There objective is not to study grizzly bear size. I have studied those charts. Male grizzlies are sexually mature at about 4 and a half years old. However, a grizzly is not a fully mature bear until about 9 years old. Those "average weights" include the weights of juvenile bears. The average mature male Yellowstone grizzly weighs about 500 pounds.
However, the California grizzly and the grizzlies of the American west that fed regularly on bison and scrub cattle was much bigger. Oh, and the dumpsters are no longer available for grizzlies in Yellowstone. Have you forgotten the 1,000+ pound Alaskan peninsula grizzlies or the Kodiaks?
Yes, the story of the grizzly bears killing bulls and a lion are true.

[0ldgrizz]

The Great Bear Almanac by Gary Brown.
"When, a few years ago, a Los Angeles County grizzly was sent to Monterrey, Mexico, to be pitted against the man-killing African lion 'Parnell' the great Californian handled the African king as a cat would a rat. He killed him so quickly that the big audience hardly knew how it was done," described Horace Bell in 'On the Old West Coast', 1930 ( as cited in Storer and Tevis, 'California Grizzly' ).
There is also a vague account of a circus ( African ) lion that jumped an American black bear during an act. The fight was fierce and both combatants were injured, but the lion's injuries were of the extent that it had to be destroyed.

[0ldgrizz]

www.nfa.dept.shef.ac.uk/jungle/index1b1.html

Bostock's Jungle is announced as starting in Nottingham on Thursday the 9th November 1911 under the management of Mr Moyse. The venue is listed as the Empress Rink and, as for the Alexandra Rink in Sheffield, this is a roller-skating rink that has quickly outlived its use as the craze rapidly subsided. The Empress would eventually become a cinema in 1913. The Jungle in Nottingham is said to be Bostock's show from White City, including some familiar names to the Sheffield Jungle - Madame D'Orcy, Baron X and the aforementioned new trainer Gwendolyn Murray. Another parallel sees Bostock setting up his primate collection with various claims for the first of certain kinds. The following week sees probably the least bit of surprising news as it is recorded that a fight has taken place between a grizzly bear and a lion - this time the bear emerging as the victor.

shaggygod.proboards.com/board/38/felidae               wildfact.com/forum/

[creature386]

0ldgrizz, could you please stop the double posting?

[blaze]

0ldgrizz
Of course the dumpsters are not available to them anymore but in that table you can see that those average weights are from a time where the dumpsters were there.

Blanchard (1987) found that in Yellowstone, adult males feeding from dumps weighted 222kg while those that didn't weighted only 184kg, the average adult male weight of 193kg is clearly stated by Blanchard (1987) to be for individuals 5+ years old so yes, they are adults, the table from the book also writes clearly that those are mean adult weights so how can you even claim those averages include juveniles? maybe it is not an average of fully grown bears (9+ years old) but that doesn't mean juveniles are included. In fact we can see how heavy 9+ year old males are from Blanchard's data, 204kg (450lbs) and of course this average includes overfed dumpster eaters.


What do Kodiaks have to do here? isn't the match up using grizzlies? but now that you mention them, only in the fall (when they are 1/3 fat) can coastal brown bear males average 1000+ lbs. The table in the book I linked gives the only surveys of the body size of this bears and they averaged 700lbs and 860lbs, the later value (from Glen 1980) is an average of bears 9+ years old only (what you wanted) and this are spring weights (from June only) so an average over 1000lbs in the fall is possible in this population, of course over 330lbs of that would be fat.

I don't trust yellow press from a century ago but you don't have to convince me of their validity (the newspaper articles of staged fights between bears and bulls and lions), pretty sure other posters do trust them, I'm just overcautious with that kind of accounts.

[0ldgrizz]

Mature male Yellowstone grizzlies ranging from 9 to 15 years old ( fully mature ) average about 500 pounds. You ask why I mentioned Kodiaks. Why not. There is only one species of brown bear, Ursus arctos. New studies have proven that there are no true subspecies, but only various races. Also, there has been some increase in the size of Yellowstone grizzlies due to the reintroduction of wolves.
But the topic here is grizzly vs lion. In a face-to-face confrontation - grizzly wins likely about 90% of the time. And there are still mature male grizzlies in Yellowstone ranging from 700 to 900 pounds.  

[blaze]

Is not races, it's clades which in this case won't be much different from subspecies, either way OP says Yellowstone grizzly.

So over 15 years old don't count? isn't that cherry picking? either way according to Blanchard (1987) data adult males 9 to 15 years old average 208kg (460lbs), this weights were taken from late summer to early fall (july-september) so the sample should be a mixture of relatively lean and fat bears but the dumps are still there so its more likely they are on the fat side than not.

According to Schwartz et al. (2014), adult male grizzlies from Yellowstone average a body fat percentage of 22% (in july) to 28% (in September) throughout the same period but this were taken during 2000-2010 so the dumps are not there, the sample from Blanchard probably has an average body fat percentage closer to 28% throughout the whole period because of this. In fact, Schwartz et al. (2014) data (adult defined as 5+ years old) doesn't find bigger adult males in Yellowstone during the time span 2000-2010 than Blanchard found in 1975-1980, in the summer they averaged 189kg and 208kg in the fall and they say that this averages did not vary across the ten years they were capturing and weighting them.

Taking the above into account the lean mass of the average full grown adult male grizzly from Yellowstone is 150kg (330lbs), while assuming a body fat percentage of 10%, a 400lbs male lion would have a lean mass of ~163kg, it will indeed need to have 100lbs over the lion to match its lean mass. Do you really believe that at similar weights the bear would win 90% of the time? All based on century old hyperbolic accounts of staged fights between undescript animals in unspecified/unverified physical condition?

btw, this is how their heads look at similar sizes.

[0ldgrizz]

Somewhere between 15 and 20 years old, the bear would begin to loose muscle mass. A 400 pound lion would lose against a 460 pound grizzly in a face-to-face encounter. The big cats are all specialized ambush predators. When a lion fights a lion, they take numerous rest-breaks. The grizzly has far greater stamina. There have been numerous face-off encounters in captivity between grizzlies and lions. The grizzly always defeated the lion. The most famous was between Parnell, the man-killer lion and Ramadam, the California grizzly.

[theropod]

Somewhere between 15 and 20 years old, the bear would begin to loose muscle mass.

Quite biased to not include those bears in the statistics, don’t you think so?

[creature386]

I guess he wants to take prime specimens for the face off (like nobody would use a 60+ human in a match-up). Looks like a classic "which average should be used?" debate because the actual averages are lower than what some people want.