1/32 scale animals second part

Maybe the Preiser could be right for a Wild yak ?

The New-Ray gaur seems to be strongly influenced by the Britains. Do you have the Preiser gaur and do you know the size, Christophe?

Not sure if this has been features, but the Play Visions Pholiderpeton [syn. Eogyrinus] comes to 1:33 for a maximum sized individual using body length (12 cm) as a metric, so could easily be 1:32. If one uses head size (2 cm), the scale comes closer to 1:21, but the head is oversized on this toy.


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Thanks, a very interesting animal!

I am not finished with my buffalos yet. I also have two water buffalos, one by Clairet and one by Britains:
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Are they 1/32 scale? First, we need to determine what kind of water buffalo they are. They are clearly not wild water buffalos. As we saw before, they have very different horns. Both look like domestic water buffalos. There are two types of water buffalos, river and swamp water buffalos. They differ in various respects, but the most characteristic difference is probably the shape of their horns. As described in “The water buffalo” (1977) by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “The horns of the young Swamp buffalo grow outward, and curve in a semicircle, but always remain more or less on the plane of the forehead. The horns of River buffaloes grow downward and backward, then curve upward in a spiral”. Both the Britains and Clairet have horns that suggest that they are swamp water buffalos.

There are many different breeds of swamp buffalos, many of which look very similar to me. There are also crossbreeds and hybrid domestic-wild swamp buffalos. I don’t think I can determine which breed the Britains and Clairet are. It doesn’t matter too much to me, as I am not sure whether they were modelled after a specific breed. There is relatively little size variability between the breeds, and in most breeds, male and female swamp buffalos have a similar size.

Sukri et al. (2019) measured swamp buffalos in Lombok, Indonesia, and found that they have a shoulder height of 112-131 cm. I think the Britains and Clairet could be Lombok buffalos, though I am quite sure that there are other breeds that also look similar. Here is a photo of what I believe is a Lombok buffalo:
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The Clairet is 3.5/112 cm at the shoulder, which is the minimum height measured by Sukri et al. However, in terms of length, the Clairet is not so small at all. Like many other Clairet models, it is very “stretched out”. Its body length (shoulder protrusion to the sitting bone) is about 4.6/147 cm, which is more than the maximum length of 139 cm that Sukri et al. measured. I don’t think this rules it out as a 1/32 scale swamp buffalo because some breeds such as in Vietnam are known to be larger (140 cm shoulder height for females according to the 1977 United Nations publication), but the Clairet would need to be a funny kind of crossbreed. I have nothing against the Clairet though. I think it is a very beautiful figure and while it isn’t entirely realistic, it captures the main characteristics of a swamp buffalo well.
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The proportions of the Britains buffalo are much more realistic. It has a shoulder height of 4.1/131 cm and is 4.3/138 cm in body length, so it is a large swamp buffalo both in height and length.
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For comparison, here we have my two swamp buffalos with my African buffalos:
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And here with the Britains Indian gaur:
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rogerpgvg wrote:

The New-Ray gaur seems to be strongly influenced by the Britains. Do you have the Preiser gaur and do you know the size, Christophe?

I was speaking about the Yak, not a Gaur, ufortunately I let mine go years ago.

Thank you for your kind words about the Clairet Water buffalo, not as realistic as the Britains but a little piece of art all the same

You are right, I meant to write Preiser yak, but I didn't .

I love the Clairet water buffalo too. It has something very special, even though I don't know what it is.

Two wonderful pieces in very different ways. I have the Britains model and it is excellent. There's a sort of Art Déco touch in that Clairet model.

Thanks, Rogério.

Ikimon opah. Fish measures 5.0 cm for a scale of 1:24-1:40, so it actually fits into scales 1:24, 1:32, and 1:40

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A great miss for me alas

FOR ME TOO ?
I have been fishing for many years, very rare or it has passed me by

I managed to find the opah recently. It occasionally appears on Japanese auction websites, usually not for too much money.

rogerpgvg wrote:

I managed to find the opah recently. It occasionally appears on Japanese auction websites, usually not for too much money.

Which website ?

A while ago, I reviewed the new [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] box. I mentioned that four of the figures can be considered 1/32 scale:
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I have quite a few things to say about their size, so I’ll discuss the orangutan today and the others another time.
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As far as I can tell, our knowledge of orangutan sizes is based on very few individuals. Lyon (1908) reports the measurements of two male Sumatran orangutans and Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) those of three Sumatran males and one Bornean male. Taken all data together, male orangutans have a standing height of 133.5-146 cm and a head+body length of 89-99 cm.

The CollectA has a total height of 3.9/125 cm and a head-to-crown length of 3.0/96 cm. Exactly the right head-crown length, but a bit too small in total height. There is actually no scale that fits both the total and head-crown length. It confirms my impression that CollectA made the legs a bit too short relative to the rest of the body. But perhaps we can say that he isn’t standing completely straight and we can accept him in the 1/32 reserve.

I am very pleased with this because 1/32 scale orangutans are very hard to find. Most are too large. For example, the Britains is enormous (4.2/134 cm head-crown length):
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Playspaces made one that is smaller, but it is still too large with a head-crown length of 3.3/106 cm. His excuse is that our knowledge of male orangutan sizes is based on only 6 individuals and that the real size range may be larger.
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The Bandai orangutan is fairly small (3.0/96 cm head-crown length), but isn’t she a female? Females are only 68-86.5 cm according to Lyon (1907) and EOL (N = 13). However, she, uh, he claims to be an unflanged adult. Whether he is indeed small enough for an unflanged male is questionable because they are larger than females but smaller than flanged males (based on bone lengths, Kralick et al., 2023). Probably not quite 1/32 scale, but a regular visitor to the 1/32 reserve.
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Finally, I got two Panini orangs from Andreas’s shop:
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According to the shop, the one on the left is female and the one on the right is male. That’s quite possible, but this couple have swapped their sexes because that works better for the 1/32 reserve. The orangutan on the left is 2.9/93 cm head-crown length, so it entered the reserve as an unflanged male. The one on the right is 2.7/86 cm so it is fine as a female. No one realises that they are cheating .

rogerpgvg wrote:

I am not finished with my buffalos yet. I also have two water buffalos, one by Clairet and one by Britains:
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For comparison, here we have my two swamp buffalos with my African buffalos:
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And here with the Britains Indian gaur:
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Such a beautiful Clairet figure - I've never seen it before!
It's like an ancient Egyptian carving with those sleek lines and muscles.
The horns look like they are made in a semi transparent plastic? That's quite unusual.

Thanks for sharing Roger. It's great to come here and see so many 1/32nd scale figures that I've never come across before. A herd of these would look amazing with their shiny coats and horns.

rogerpgvg wrote:

A while ago, I reviewed the new [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] box. I mentioned that four of the figures can be considered 1/32 scale:
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Finally, I got two Panini orangs from Andreas’s shop:
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.

What an array of orangutans! The baby is so cute! and looks good hugging the newcomer. They look like they were meant to be.

The 2 Paninis are very nice models Roger, well done on getting them from Andreas!

Besides the size, flanges are the only way to tell figures of orangutan males from females. They're not always present in toy figures and not even all males show them as far as I know so it opens some possible cheating for your reserve. By the way, Britains orangutan is so large that it doesn't look like as being part of the Britains reserve.

Thank you, Annette and Rogério. You are right, Annette, the Clairet buffalo is very beautiful. You are better at describing it than I am. And yes, the horns are semi-transparent. They are beautifully made: the rest of the body is painted, but it is as if the paint is in the plastic, so the transition between the horns and the head is very smooth. I love the way this is done.

I don't know what the sculptor thought when making the Britains orangutan. Perhaps they believed the mythical stories about gigantic orangutans.

Next, the CollectA king cheetah:
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It has a shoulder height of 2.6/83 cm and a head-body length of about 4.5/144 cm. We have good measurements of cheetahs, mainly from an article by Meachen et al. (2019), who measured 745 cheetahs. The foreleg length of adults over 4 years was 62-89 cm and the head-body length was 105-152 cm (excluding outliers). Other sources such as Du Preez (1976) and Labuschagne (1979) report larger shoulder heights, but these measurements were made over the shoulder to the spine or included the length of the foot.

Let’s compare the CollectA with some other cheetahs. A few cheetahs that [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and a few more recent additions. First my only other king cheetah, from Kaiyodo:
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The Kaiyodo is a large one with a shoulder height of 2.9/93 cm and a head-body length of about 4.5/144 cm. That’s fine for head-body length, but the shoulder height is larger than that of the largest cheetah that Meachen et al. measured. Can I make it 1/32 scale? Perhaps I can. Meachen et al. measured to the top of the shoulder, as you can see in this photo, whereas my measurement is to the top of the withers/spine. I can’t quite tell where the Kaiyodo’s shoulder is, but it seems to me that it is lower than the withers.
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In addition, a cheetah’s shoulder blade isn’t connected to its collar bone with a joint but the two are joined only by ligaments (Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002). In this way, it can sling its forelegs when it is running. This also means that its shoulder can be lower than its withers when running. It’s a large cheetah, but I’ll give it the benefit of doubt.

Here is the Clairet cheetah, 2.7/86 cm in shoulder height and 4.4/141 cm in head-body length:
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And the CollectA with the Bandai cheetahs. The adult has a 2.4/77 cm hip height and 4.1/131 cm head-body length:
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Two new ones that I haven’t shown in this topic yet. Not the highest quality models, but sizewise, they are more typical for a cheetah. Another Panini from Andreas, 2.2/70 cm shoulder height and 3.8/122 cm head-body length:
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And a Playspaces, respectively 2.3/74 cm and 3.9/125 cm.
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Vintage brands which are supposed to work at your favorite scale do not give you many cheetahs. Fortunately you can find a few trough your researches and the first ones are beautiful for their sizes.

That's right, the only vintage 1/32 cheetah I am aware of is the Clairet. It's a similar situation with leopards.

So let's have a look at the CollectA leopard:
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It is a very large leopard with a 2.5/80 cm shoulder height and 4.8/154 cm head-body length (straight length). How large can leopards get? There are many publications with leopard measurements. It is easy to spend many days looking for and studying leopard sizes. I must stop before I go crazy!

Let’s try to summarise. Considering just the larger studies, Voigt et al. (2018) measured 18 male Namibian leopards and 18 females and found that their mean head-body length was respectively 127 and 114 cm. Stuart (1981) showed that 21 males in the Cape Province were 92-125 cm and 8 females were 95-105 cm. Namibian males in Conradie (2004) were 134 cm on average (N = 59) and females were 114 cm (N = 58). Old males were particularly large in the Kruger National Park, measured by Bailey (1993), who reported that 5 old males had an average length of 141 cm, while 6 old females were 122 cm. Most studies don’t state whether the head-body length is taken as a straight length (between pegs) or following the contours of the body (over the curves). It is often recommended that measurements are taken between pegs, but this isn’t always done.

What is the largest leopard ever reliably measured? Well, that depends on how good you want the evidence to be. The largest in the Conradie (2004) data set was 150 cm in head-body length and they report that the largest shoulder height was 78 cm. It’s not much larger than the 141 cm average length of the five old males in Bailey (1993), so it’s plausible.

Athreya and Belsare (2008) report an Indian leopard with a head-body length of 154.9 cm, total length 251.5 cm, a hind leg length (hip joint to end of the digits) of 80 cm and a weight of 75 kg. I think these measurements are very convincing.

Owen (2013) reports the measurements of three adult South African males, all very large. They have head-body lengths of 140, 152 and 157 cm and shoulder heights of respectively 84, 80 and 80 cm. It’s a bit suspect that all male leopards in this study are so large, but the other measurements (tail length, chest girth) also show that these leopards were large and Owen discusses in detail how she ensured that the measurements were accurate.

Next, we have an Iraqi leopard with a 259.1 cm total length and 94.0 cm tail length (so head-body was 165.1 cm) mentioned by Spalton and Hikmani (2006). According to them, it was originally reported in the book The mammals of Arabia by Harrison (1968). I haven’t been able to find this book, but I did find a later revised edition (Harrison & Bates, 1991). The maximum tail length in this edition is indeed 94.0 cm, but the maximum head-body length is only 226.1 cm. I don’t know whether Spalton and Hikmani (2006) made an error when reporting the measurements of Harrison (1968) or whether Harrison and Bates (1991) removed the measurement from the revised edition. Either way, there is reason to be sceptical about the 165 cm leopard.

Heptner and Sludskii (1992) mention that the largest Caucasian leopard measured "in the flesh" had a body length of 171 cm along the curvature of the back, and a tail length of 102 cm. This comes from an article by Bil’kevich (1924) in what I think is a Russian hunting journal. The large head-body length is consistent with the tail length. Unsurprisingly, I haven’t been able to find this article, so I can’t verify the measurements. This leopard was much larger than any normal leopard or even the Athreya et al. (2008), Owen (2013) and Harrison (1968) leopards, which makes it quite suspect. If the measurements are correct, then the fact that we need to go back so far in time to such an obscure source suggests that this kind of size is extremely rare.

Wikipedia mentions that leopards have a maximum head-body length of 183 cm, referring to Hunter et al. in Kingdon & Hoffman’s (2013) Mammals of Africa. In turn, Hunter et al. refer to Conradie (2004) as their source. However, as we have already seen, the maximum head-body length in Conradie (2004) is 150 cm. I have no idea where 183 cm comes from . Both publications base themselves on the same data set of 59 males and 58 females. I think 183 cm may be a typographical error.

Finally, the maximum head-body length on websites and in reference books is often given as 191 cm, sometimes rounded to 190 cm. This is so much larger than any other leopard that it is surely impossible. The information appears come from a leopard mentioned in Guggisbergs’ (1975) Wild cats of the World. Apart from its unbelievable size, the measurements of this leopard show inconsistencies. Generally, leopards’ tail length is 36-43% of their total length, but the tail of this giant leopard is reported as only 90 cm (32%). It weighed only 75.7 kg, whereas the much smaller 152 and 157 cm leopards in Owen (2013) weighed 80 and 71 kg and the 155 cm leopard in Athreya et al. (2008) was 75 kg. A maximum head-body length of 191 cm (or 190 cm) is given in well-known reference books such as Nowak’s (1999) Mammals of the World, Grzimek’s (2004) Animal life encyclopedia and Kingdon’s (2015) Field guide to African mammals. It is common practice to copy measurements without checking whether they are plausible . In particular, I find that reports of very large animals often have to be taken with a pinch of salt. When you check them carefully, they turn out to be wrong or very implausible . It results in a distortion of our perception of animal sizes.

This is a very long-winded way to answer the question whether the CollectA leopard is 1/32 scale! And I still don’t have the answer! The straight head-body length of the CollectA is smaller than the 155 and 157 cm lengths in Athreya et al. (2008) and Owen (2013), but they don’t say whether their measurements were taken between pegs or over the curves. If they were taken over the curves, then the CollectA is too large. As we have seen, other sources report larger leopards, but I don’t trust them. Well, let’s give the CollectA the benefit of doubt, shall we?

Let’s compare him with the Papo mini. The Papo looks larger but is slightly smaller in head-body length (4.6/147 cm):
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The Bandai African leopard (4.4/141 cm). It's meant to be a leopard, but because it is quite bulky and dark, I prefer to see it as a jaguar.
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The Britains has a very good size for 1/32 scale: 4.2/134 cm, exactly the average length of males in Conradie (2004) (females are much cmaller).
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The CollectA with an Innovate Kids (4.7/150 cm):
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And with a Playspaces (4.5/144 cm):
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The quality of the CollectA minis is a lot better than that of older toob figures!

it's such a beautiful figure Roger! Hopefully I will add this one to my collection.

I love the raised curly tail and the paw pads on that raised front paw. Great attention to detail.

You've done a lot of research on sizes! You need to publish a paper on all these erratic sizes and misreporting of sizes as well! - most probably for all the figures you have been researching.
To save time you could copy and paste all your findings from here

Leopards hve so many different populations and subspecies in very different regions and biomes. That's surely an animal wich will never be easy to find the right scale match. You know I'm very tolerant and the CollecTA leopard, which is also slightly larger than desired in their standard size, is a perfect addition to your reserve. I'm surprised how bulky is that Bandai figure! From all your complex study, what I retain is:
"The quality of the CollectA minis is a lot better than that of older toob figures!"

Thanks, Annette and Rogério. It's funny that I was also thinking that it would be worth writing an article about leopard sizes. The problem is that I feel that I have only scratched the surface of leopard measurements, I am not a biologist and there are a lot of publications that I can't get access to.

Roger wrote:

From all your complex study, what I retain is:
"The quality of the CollectA minis is a lot better than that of older toob figures!"

But I am sure you already knew that! You are saying that you didn't learn anything from my long study of leopard sizes . But no worries, I wrote it so that I learn from it myself .

rogerpgvg wrote:

Roger wrote:

From all your complex study, what I retain is:
"The quality of the CollectA minis is a lot better than that of older toob figures!"

But I am sure you already knew that! You are saying that you didn't learn anything from my long study of leopard sizes . But no worries, I wrote it so that I learn from it myself .

I'm not saying it is useless, I read the whole post but what I am talking is about what I retain. Your posts are really interesting for anyone collecting figures at a certain scale because you document a lot of interesting information about sizes in a single topic and it is easy to find it whenever it is needed. I don't have to learn, I only need to know where to find.