1/32 scale animals second part

Thanks a lot for the comparisons, Annette. It's useful to see how the Kitans compare with the Britains and Newrays.

Kikimalou wrote:

I measured mine again just now, one is under 3,5cm and the other is more 3,4cm

Thank you, then indeed they don't make 1/32 scale but 1/40 scale is fine. That makes sense: the ruler is under the wildebeest in Annette's photos, so the wildebeest look slightly larger relative to the ruler than they really are. It shows how difficult it is to get measurements from photos, even when there is a ruler. It's even more difficult with a Lego block or in a comparison with another figure. That's the problem with collecting figures in only one scale: I end up with a lot of figures that are close, but aren't exactly the right scale. Sometimes I am lucky and later discover an article that shows that the size range is larger than I thought .

Kikimalou wrote:

So they would be between 1/35,6 and 1/37,6 if we follow Braack and between 1/37,4 and 1/45,3 if we follow Attwell. None of them are 1/32. I will try to find time to make a comparison pic with the Britains Ltd.

I think that's right. The problem is that we don't have much size information about wildebeest. Braack doesn't give a range, just means for bulls and cows, so we can't use it to calculate a scale range. Attwell does give a range, but measured over the shoulder, so we can't use it unless we do the same. So I used data from Sachs, who measured eastern white-bearded wildebeest (similar species) both over the shoulder and between pegs, and then subtracted the difference from the Attwell measurements. This gave me a range of about 115-143 cm (including both bulls and cows). It hinges on several assumptions, but at least it gives me a plausible range to work with. If the Kitans are 3.5 cm, that gives me a scale between 1/32.9 and 1/40.9. In any case, they are not 1/32 scale and 1/40 scale is OK. I'd say 1/35 or 1/38 would probably be best.

Roger wrote:

Annette, thanks for all these useful comparison photos.
I also love wildebeests, but every time I state this, I get the feeling that others might think I'm referring to a gastronomic preference. There are specific events in wildlife documentaries that impress me a lot, but nothing compares to the great migrations and the moment when the massive herds of wildebeests and other ungulates venture into the crossing of the Mara River.

you are welcome Roger! I will try to get better photos in daylight - this was just a rush snap for the comparison here.

I understand what you are saying about the river crossings during their migrations, but I can't watch any of it! I am too sensitive for any of the injuries and croc meals that happen. Same as nearly every documentary on African wildlife - with all the hunts and kills. I steer away from these.
I prefer to watch the animals relaxed, and in their grazing herds it is then that you see all the nuances and quirks and wonderful personalities of individuals that are never mentioned in the documentaries. It is these small instances that steal your heart in a second and endear you to that particular individual for life.
I even discovered an African animal tour guide that takes people to see the very smallest of the desert animals! like the mice and the insects! that is my type of animal tour guide:)

rogerpgvg wrote:

Thanks a lot for the comparisons, Annette. It's useful to see how the Kitans compare with the Britains and Newrays.

Kikimalou wrote:

I measured mine again just now, one is under 3,5cm and the other is more 3,4cm

Thank you, then indeed they don't make 1/32 scale but 1/40 scale is fine. That makes sense: the ruler is under the wildebeest in Annette's photos, so the wildebeest look slightly larger relative to the ruler than they really are. It shows how difficult it is to get measurements from photos, even when there is a ruler. It's even more difficult with a Lego block or in a comparison with another figure. That's the problem with collecting figures in only one scale: I end up with a lot of figures that are close, but aren't exactly the right scale. Sometimes I am lucky and later discover an article that shows that the size range is larger than I thought .

Kikimalou wrote:

So they would be between 1/35,6 and 1/37,6 if we follow Braack and between 1/37,4 and 1/45,3 if we follow Attwell. None of them are 1/32. I will try to find time to make a comparison pic with the Britains Ltd.

I think that's right. The problem is that we don't have much size information about wildebeest. Braack doesn't give a range, just means for bulls and cows, so we can't use it to calculate a scale range. Attwell does give a range, but measured over the shoulder, so we can't use it unless we do the same. So I used data from Sachs, who measured eastern white-bearded wildebeest (similar species) both over the shoulder and between pegs, and then subtracted the difference from the Attwell measurements. This gave me a range of about 115-143 cm (including both bulls and cows). It hinges on several assumptions, but at least it gives me a plausible range to work with. If the Kitans are 3.5 cm, that gives me a scale between 1/32.9 and 1/40.9. In any case, they are not 1/32 scale and 1/40 scale is OK. I'd say 1/35 or 1/38 would probably be best.

Eastern white-bearded wildebeests look like small Blue wildebeests with a sloppy mane. Sachs is maybe right to substrack 13cm but it is still a speculation. I'm not a specialist but the Blue wildebeest I saw were big antelopes. Collecting at 1/32 requires reasoning to determine what is in and what is out. Collecting at several scales requires other ways of reasoning, and for me it's a question of determining which scale is the most appropriate. From my point of view, the 1/40 scale is the most appropriate because, at 1m38 at the withers, it remains within the Attwell and even Sachs average.

You are right, collecting in only one scale vs. many scales is different. Collecting only one scale presents a specific challenge, because I normally need a size range. Many articles only give a mean and working out the range can indeed be a bit of guess work. I don't think my wildebeest estimates are too far off, but it is more difficult with some other species.

The PNSO Yangchuanosaurus "Dayong" is 1:32 for the specimen (perhaps a subadult) it's based on.
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Thanks for showing your dinosaurs, Leyster. Good to see that there are quite a few in 1/32 scale.

Another antelope today, Kudus! Most of us probably know the Starlux pair:
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A very flamboyant male and a more modest female. I like them both in their own way. Usually, companies make male and female models about equally large (even if they shouldn’t), but Starlux chose to make the male kudu much larger. The male is 4.4/141 cm at the shoulder and the female is 3.3/106 cm. Was Starlux right to make the male so much larger than the female?
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I haven’t found any research articles reporting first-hand measurements of greater kudus. Wikipedia claims that males are indeed much larger (up to 160 cm shoulder height) than females (as little as 100 cm). They refer to the Ultimate Ungulate website, which says that greater kudus are between 100 and 160 cm in shoulder height and that the range in body length is relatively smaller, 185-245 cm. However, according to Furstenburg (2022) the difference in shoulder height between males (128-152 cm) and females (119-141 cm) is much smaller. I am not so keen on Furstenburg’s articles because they don’t give references (like most books) and were written for hunters, but in my experience, his size information is usually correct.

Clearly, the Starlux sculptor consulted Wikipedia or Ultimate Ungulate, but who is right, these two websites or Furstenburg? When I look at photos on the web, male greater kudus are larger than the females, but the difference is not so extreme. This is also consistent with the length reported in Ultimate Ungulate, which doesn’t have such an extreme range. My feeling is that Ultimate Ungulate and Wikipedia are wrong. This means that the Starlux female isn’t 1/32 scale .

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Toy Major also made a 1/32 scale kudu:
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It is marked 1998 and has a shoulder height of 4.6/147 cm (without hair). Its thick legs are quite typical for many animal toys from the 1990s and 2000s. Very different from the elegant Starlux:
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More generally, the Toy Major style is very different from the more delicate style of vintage companies. Here is a comparison with a few Britains ungulates:
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I am okay with the Toy Major style, but the kudu looks better when it is displayed with vintage elephants than antelopes.

If you consider that the Starlux female is very young, you can still keep her in your collection.
As for the Starlux sculptor, if he got his inspiration from Wikipedia, it's because he could read the future.

I think it is just a futuristic joke, Christophe.
Here is something very interesting on Roger's collection. Since his measurements are mostly based on shoulder height, it allows him to mix a Toy Major model with a Starlux which are as much different as they could be. Toy Major figures fall into the modern company designs but into the subcategory Chinamals. 1990's witnessed an explosion of animal toy figures and this "toyish" design was quite successful at the moment. No, they're not less realistic because they're older, Starlux is older and far more realistic. It is just about tendencies. Also, Toy Major figures were targeted at a very low price. Now we have again more realistic designs, even the called Chinamals these days do not look like Chinamals anymore. They're now more realistic, following the tendency we've been witnessing with most of the popular brands. though, contrarily to the latter, they still have competitive prices. Now there's another tendency, since realistic figures with a similar pose lack identity because they will look almost the exact same since they lack the "artistic license", brands are also proposing more unusual poses. We don't see it that much with Western companies but the Japanese and Chinese are surely not disapointing in this regard. OK, enough of theories and neologisms. I think your female greater kudu is 1:32 scale but my only reference is the male.

I thought these 2 Starlux koudou belong to 2 different species..

Kikimalou wrote:

If you consider that the Starlux female is very young, you can still keep her in your collection.

Regardless of the scale, I'll keep the female kudu in my collection. Contrary to what this topic may sometimes suggest, I treat the animals outside the 1/32 reserve well too .

Roger wrote:

Since his measurements are mostly based on shoulder height, it allows him to mix a Toy Major model with a Starlux which are as much different as they could be.

It would be interesting to have a 1/32 scale reserve based on leg circumference .

Roger wrote:

Toy Major figures fall into the modern company designs but into the subcategory Chinamals. 1990's witnessed an explosion of animal toy figures and this "toyish" design was quite successful at the moment.

That's right, though not only Chinamals had thick legs and large heads.

Caracal wrote:

I thought these 2 Starlux koudou belong to 2 different species..

The female may have been intended as a lesser kudu. Unfortunately for the 1/32 reserve, this doesn't help, because then it would be too large.

rogerpgvg wrote:

Roger wrote:

Since his measurements are mostly based on shoulder height, it allows him to mix a Toy Major model with a Starlux which are as much different as they could be.

It would be interesting to have a 1/32 scale reserve based on leg circumference .

Put that TM kudu at 1:12 scale. There's no perfect formula and I think you're doing a great job. :)

really elegant Starlux kudus. I hope you manage to find their heights one day. Perhaps an animal rescue place could help, like The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust or similar. They take in all animals in need as well as their main baby elephant focus, so they've had impalas and duiker and giraffes. I'm sure they may have had kudus and would keep height records.

You'd indeed think that animal rescue places and zoos measure their animals. It would be useful if they made them public because there are so many animals of which we have very little size information. If I have a lot of energy, I may contact them one day, but it's already a lot of work to find research articles.

This Yujin hedgehog coral is 2.5 cm across, for a scale of 1:200 for a maximum-sized colony of 5 meters. But, if I am going the math correctly, could be 1:32 for a colony 80 cm wide:

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Thank you, Blaine. I have a few of the Yujin corals on my wishlist (after you showed us one in this topic), but I didn't realise this one can also be 1/32 scale.

Pink dolphins!
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I have two pink dolphin species in my reserve. One species is the boto or Amazon river dolphin:
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The boto is the largest river dolphin and according to Da Silva and Martin (2018) the maximum recorded length is 255 cm for males and 225 cm for females. Harrison and Brownell (1971) found that males become sexually active at a length of about 228 cm and females at 175 to 180 cm.

The Safari from the recent South America TOOB just makes the minimum length for a female with a 5.9/189 cm total length:
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My other boto, made by Takara in 2015, is considerably larger with a length of 7.2/230 cm:
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The second pink dolphin species I have is the Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphin. Again, I have two models (but three dolphins):
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These dolphins can be up to about 270 cm in length (Barros et al., 2004; Gui et al., 2014, Jefferson, 2000). Some researchers mention 300 cm as the maximum size, but I haven’t found any hard evidence for this. Wang (1965, 1995) suggested that in Chinese specimens, adult females reach sexual maturity at 200-250 cm and adult males at 190-240 cm, but recent evidence suggests that sexual maturity may not occur until lengths of ca. 235 cm in females (Jefferson 2000).

One pink humpbacked dolphin is from Safari, this time from the Dolphins TOOB:
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It is 8.5/272 cm, so it might be very slightly too large for 1/32 scale, depending about what we believe about the size of Indo-pacific humpbacked dolphins.

The FOR company (sometimes referred to as FOR Aquameridian) made a very beautiful model of a female with calf in 2017:
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The adult is 7.0/224 cm, which is potentially a bit small for a sexually mature female. We don’t know that much about when they become sexually mature and there is variability around the mean length they become sexually mature, so I’ll give her the benefit of doubt.

It's worth showing a few more photos of this great model. The FOR dolphin comes on a base with a light, but you can take it off the base and even remove it from the "wave".
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Just a side note, the company is 'For Corporation'. They are not the same as Aquameridian. Aquameridian folded and For Corporation bought the rights to their models, so some models are shared between the two companies and some are uniquely For Corporation.

This idea of using a tape measure to determine the sexual maturity of a creature is something that confuses me immensely. Why not just ask?
So nice that you can introduce a few unusual dolphin species into your collection.

such beautiful dolphins Roger! Congratulations on a very impressive pod. I've never seen any of these before. It's like Christmas coming here!

bmathison1972 wrote:

Just a side note, the company is 'For Corporation'. They are not the same as Aquameridian. Aquameridian folded and For Corporation bought the rights to their models, so some models are shared between the two companies and some are uniquely For Corporation.

Thank you! I was always quite confused about the name of the company.

Roger wrote:

This idea of using a tape measure to determine the sexual maturity of a creature is something that confuses me immensely. Why not just ask?
So nice that you can introduce a few unusual dolphin species into your collection.

The problem is that when I ask them, they always say that they are sexually mature, just to cheat themselves into the 1/32 reserve .

sunny wrote:

such beautiful dolphins Roger! Congratulations on a very impressive pod. I've never seen any of these before. It's like Christmas coming here!

Thank you! I often feel it is always Christmas for me; I keep finding new figures.

Quand il me prend dans ses bras, je vois la vie en rose

Of course they're all sexually mature, you can see that with the naked eye.

This may have already been covered here, but the Safari Ltd. Wild Sealife giant squid has a mantle length of 5.5 cm for a scale of 1:17.1-1:40.9, so it fits into 1:32 (especially for a female specimen).
The total length stretched out is 24.5 cm but mantle length is more reliable for calculating scale.

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rogerpgvg wrote:

You'd indeed think that animal rescue places and zoos measure their animals. It would be useful if they made them public because there are so many animals of which we have very little size information. If I have a lot of energy, I may contact them one day, but it's already a lot of work to find research articles.

Very few places can get close enough for shoulder height measurements like this, and it often isn't super useful to our records. (Most size information comes from field work when an animal is sedated, or unfortunately dead) Even weight can be difficult--most animals must be trained to step on to a scale, and few hoof stock will let you get close enough to measure their height even if it were safe to do so. There are always exceptions though of course and if you like I can ask in my zookeeper group if anyone has any kudu measurements, you never know! :) I know the giraffe barn I worked at had measuring marks on the door so you could measure as they walked in.

Beautiful kudus, no matter the scale, though!

Thanks for the explanation, Jill. I'd be very interested in giraffe heights; surprisingly, this information is very hard to find for the tallest land animal. Ideally, with information about the giraffe subspecies.

Thanks for showing the giant squid, Blaine. I thought I had the Monterey Bay squid, but when I saw yours I realised mine is the same. There aren't many squid in the 1/32 marine reserve, so I am very pleased to have it.

These Takara common remora have a body length of about 2.4 cm and scale 1:16.7-1:36. They were accessories for a sand tiger shark (I do not know if the shark also falls within 1:32, however). You can read more on today's 'Museum' post of mine.

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