Leopards prefer domestic dogs as prey

[Guest guest]

>Leopards in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in North Mumbai have

>taken a liking to domestic dogs, which has emerged as their favourite

>prey.

 

 

This widely reported finding has almost certainly been

misread and misunderstood.

 

The factual basis for it, however, is probably mostly correct:

 

 

>An analysis of 117 scats, collected between May 2008 and March 2009, by

>the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) has indicated that almost

>half of the prey detected in the droppings was domestic dog.

>A combination of dog, rodents and wild boar formed almost 90 per cent of

>the prey, the study said.

 

 

This is what one would expect, since these species are the

species most accessible to leopards in the vicinity -- but I would

suspect that most of the " wild boar " are actually domestic pigs,

foraging refuge, like the dogs and most of the rodents, around the

inhabited perimeters of the park.

 

The park is where the leopards hide by daylight, not their

entire hunting range.

 

Misinterpretation of the evidence continues thusly:

 

 

> " Leopards are well-known to be opportunistic and due to abundance of

>domestic dogs around SGNP, the big cats seems to be largely surviving on

>small prey as a total of 81 per cent of hairs were identified as

>belonging to species weighing less than 20kg, " BNHS Project-Head

>(City Forest) Krishna Tiwari told PTI here.

>

>This is contradictory to the common belief by ecologists that leopards

>tend to consume prey in the weight range of 20 to 70 kg, he said.

 

 

The facts are probably correct, but the preferences of

leopards in genuinely wild habitat are not to be confused with the

realities of North Mumbai, where the only abundant species in the 20

to 70 kg range are humans.

 

 

>Covering a area of almost 103 sq km, SNGP, which spans over Thane

>district and Mumbai suburban division, is home to 24 leopards, as

>per the 2008 census report.

 

4.5 square kilometers apiece is not nearly sufficient habitat

to sustain a normal and natural prey base for leopards, or for any

large predator. Leopards and other mammalian predators of about

their size normally need more like 45 square kilometers of optimal

habitat, or more if the habitat is arid.

 

24 leopards could survive in 103 square kilometers only if

the protected habitat served as little more than their bedroom, from

which they venture out at night to hunt, covering a total range of

more than 1,000 square kilometers.

 

It is possible that the leopard count is inflated, as the

tiger counts have been in most tiger habitats in India. Even if it

is inflated by 75%, however, the park itself is too small to

sustain the leopard population. The leopards are surviving, in

whatever their abundance, because they are finding prey beyond the

species who thrive mainly in the park, and because they have become

able to access that prey, even in the suburbs of one of the world's

largest cities.

 

There are many precedents for what is happening.

 

One precedent is in greater London, England, where red

foxes have become an abundant urban species, feeding mainly on

rabbits. A generation ago rabbits were rarely seen in London, and

foxes were never seen, but a generation ago the London suburbs still

had abundant free-roaming pet & stray former pet dogs, who

incessantly chased any rabbits they saw with volleys of furious

barking.

 

As the free-roaming dog population dropped, rabbits became

able to proliferate, and foxes appeared to silently hunt them.

 

A closer parallel is in the U.S., where rabbits, deer,

raccoons, and opossums were all scarce in urban habitats a

generation ago, but the U.S. had more than seven times as many

free-roaming dogs.

 

When the U.S. free-roaming dog population dropped, through

the combination of sterilizing dogs and dog-keepers learning to keep

their dogs home, rabbits, deer, raccoons, and opossums all became

more abundant in suburbs than anywhere else. More deer live within

city limits now than the probable total deer population of North

America before European settlement -- along with the smaller wildlife

species.

 

In the U.S., as in India, free-roaming dogs were for

generations the most ubiquitous rodent hunters, but as the numbers

of dogs declined, the feral cat population exploded, with three

cats hunting rodents in place of each dog who was no longer there.

 

Then came coyotes. Able to prey on all of the other common

suburban mammals, including feral cats, coyotes typically hide by

day in parks and greenbelts, but hunt everywhere they can find prey

by night. They rarely hunt deer larger than fawns, but voraciously

scavenge the remains of deer who have been hit by cars.

 

When several million dogs were still at large in U.S. cities,

they were able to pack up and chase the coyotes out. Now, when dogs

do get loose, they are unable to find packs to join, and packs of

coyotes instead form to kill them.

 

More recently, pumas have followed coyotes into the suburbs,

and quietly hunt deer. Pumas rarely menace people, but they can

kill and eat a person, and occasionally they do.

 

This is half right:

 

>The natural habitat for the leopard is disappearing rapidly due to

>encroachment from slums and residential complexes. This encroachment has

>greatly reduced the original territory of big cats, encouraging a higher

>incidences of human-leopard conflict when the animals stray from their

>home ranges in search of food, he said.

 

While the natural habitat for leopards disappeared long ago,

the expanding suburbs of Mumbai have brought with them abundant

refuse, which is in turn feeding pigs, street dogs, rats,

monkeys, and feral cats.

 

The success of ABC programs, including in the Mumbai area,

is simultaneously reducing dog numbers to the point where leopards

can slip in and out of suburbs without enough dogs remaining to raise

a successful hue-and-cry against them. Instead of packs of dogs

noisily chasing leopards, a common sight and sound in rural villages

in Jim Corbett's time, we have leopards silently picking off dogs

one by one, thereby gaining access to the rats and pigs in more and

more suburban habitat.

 

 

>According to Tiwari, a further study on prey abundance and density

>within SGNP is required to identify whether there is a lack of

>natural prey for the leopards in the national park or if they are

>choosing dogs over natural prey on the basis of convenience or

>abundance.

>

> " Only then will it be possible to understand whether the leopards are

>heavily depending on dogs as a functional response to reduced wild

>ungulate prey density or because it is a more convenient option to

>prey on domestic canines, " he said.

 

 

No doubt Tiwari would like to have the funding to do a major

study to confirm that leopards crap dog remains because there are not

enough deer in 103 square kilometers to feed 24 leopards, and such a

study might have value, if funding for it could be found, to help

persuade the people who must be persuaded of the obvious.

 

Meanwhile, the leopard situation in & around Sanjay Gandhi

National Park will be repeated all over India as ABC programs

continue to knock down dog populations. No doubt many people will

continue to interpret leopard predation on dogs as a sign of the

abundance of dogs, rather than of the decrease of dogs to the point

where leopards can gain a foothold within suburban habitat.

 

Ahead, though, there is the risk that if leopards succeed

in hunting out dogs entirely from the vicinity of their daytime

hiding places, and if refuse disposal in India improves to the point

that rats are no longer abundant enough to encourage either street

dogs or leopards, leopards will turn increasingly often to hunting

small humans.

 

This will probably not reduce the human population by any

appreciable amount, but might result in the extirpation of leopards.

 

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

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