Can hunting of large specimens of a species make the size and weight of the species tend to be smaller?
I don't know of any research about this on tigers or any other terrestrial predators, but this is a well-known phenomenon in &quot;trophy&quot; animals1 (i.e. big game hunted for sport) and wild-caught fish1-4.
1: Allendorf, F. W., &amp; Hard, J. J. (2009). Human-induced evolution caused by unnatural selection through harvest of wild animals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(Supplement 1), 9987-9994.
2: Heino, M., Pauli, B. D., &amp; Dieckmann, U. (2015). Fisheries-induced evolution. Annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics, 46.
3: Monk, C. T., Bekkevold, D., Klefoth, T., Pagel, T., Palmer, M., &amp; Arlinghaus, R. (2021). The battle between harvest and natural selection creates small and shy fish. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(9).
4: Bowles, E., Marin, K., Mogensen, S., MacLeod, P., &amp; Fraser, D. J. (2020). Size reductions and genomic changes within two generations in wild walleye populations: associated with harvest?. Evolutionary applications, 13(6), 1128-1144.