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1 March 1996 Predicting body mass from chest circumference in moose Alces alces
Kjell Wallin, Göran Cederlund , Åke Pehrson
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Abstract

Weighing large animals in the field is often labourious and expensive. Alternative methods which replace direct measurements of body mass are, therefore, of practical value. In order to predict body mass in moose Alces alces, an allometric model based on chest circumference, sex, age and population was applied. A model to predict body mass based on chest circumference and a truncated age measurement is suggested. Impact of sex and population was weak. The ability to predict body mass was mostly influenced by chest circumference. The proportion of carcass mass to total body mass varied between 45% and 51 % among age-classes. In addition, there was a slight effect of sex on this variation, males having a proportionally larger carcass mass than females. The model's predictions of body mass are adequate for describing the distribution of body mass in moose populations and for comparing moose populations.

© WILDLIFE BIOLOGY
Kjell Wallin, Göran Cederlund , and Åke Pehrson "Predicting body mass from chest circumference in moose Alces alces," Wildlife Biology 2(1), 53-58, (1 March 1996). https://doi.org/10.2981/wlb.1996.008
Received: 1 November 1995; Accepted: 26 February 1996; Published: 1 March 1996
KEYWORDS
body mass
carcass mass
chest circumference
mass prediction
moose
morphometries
Sweden
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