behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator?

[GuateGojira]

(10-25-2015, 09:51 PM)Dr Panthera Wrote: I have a picture of a lone male lion killing a subadult elephant ( I will post it next week when I am back in town) it is from the book Predators by Ross, subadult African elephants can be anything from 1500 to 3000 kg so it is just his estimate.
The more likely limit of a single lion kill is an adult bull giraffe this has been reported from Tanzania but is also extremely rare since lone lions are usually nomads that do not want noisy , protracted kills that will bring the attention of resident lions. Bull Eland kills are also reported.
All of these instances are extreme cases showing the upper limit of predation and do not constitute 1% of all actual kills, the big cats are great successful predators but they do not want to risk injury or waste energy in futile hunts...so lions hunt probably a thousand wildebeest for every elephant and tigers take a thousand chital for every rhino.
Anybody has accounts of jaguar predation on adult tapirs? I have seen records from several areas in Brazil but those were scat analysis studies so we can not determine the age of the tapir ( or even rule out scavenging).
All big cats are successful predators of domestic cattle, yak, buffalo, and Seladang ...it is astonishing how much easier is to kill domestic animals versus wild ones of comparable size!
Even lone cheetahs have killed female waterbuck so some individual cats and prides and coalitions push the limit from time to time yet all of them prefer kills of about half of the predator size on their day to day hunts.
Incidentally the eland killed by a leopard was spooked by the leopard jumping down from a tree, the eland ran down a hill on rough terrain, fell and broke its leg...the leopard killed the immobilized eland...very much like when Joubert reported Savute lions killing an injured bull elephant...those are opportunistic kills when the victim was a huge disadvantage.

Thanks for the replay. I am going to see the picture in order to comment.

I know that giraffes are preyed by lions, but I don't know of a male or female lion killing, alone, a fully grow giraffe. According with Nowak (1999), the giraffes (male and female) weight between 550 - 1930 kg, with average adult individuals been of 800 kg. So, there is a wide range of sizes and although I think that a large male lion can kill an average giraffe breaking its slender neck, large bulls could be killed only by groups of several lions. I know of only one giraffe killed by a single lioness, but the specimen was hardly over 600 kg. Elands are also reported as prey, but the largest specimens weight an average of 650 kg and they are not very commonly hunted, like for example buffaloes. With this in mind, I still think that a record bull of 900 kg is the upper prey for a large lion in a single combat-hunt.

Obviously, like you say, lions and tigers will hunt what they can found, and in Africa, the common animals will be wildebeest (141 - 295 kg) and in India will be the chital deer (32 - 93 kg), so they are they common prey. However, if they can, they will select the larger prey available, as the use of energy is high but the retribution is considerably more than the one of a small prey. Take in count that a male chital of c.77 kg is more than enough for a solitary tiger and a male wildebeest of c.232 kg will be perfect for an average lion pride.


Predation of jaguars on tapirs is common in all south America, but Sunquist & Sunquist (2002) using scat data, report the occurrence of this item prey only in the Paraguayan Chaco, where tapir constitute only 1.5% of the diet (the common item there is the peccary and the Brocket and white-tailed deer with 23% respectively). Like you say, scat analysis don't provide clear data about the age and health state of the prey (although some studies does), but some pictures posted in the jaguar topic in this forum show jaguars killing adult tapirs of no less than 200 kg. As far I know, there are no reported cases of jaguars killing tapirs in Guatemala, probably because they are very small.

Although jaguars do hunt domestic zebu of over 600 kg, the banteng killed by the Javanese tigers were wild animals, not domestic, so it is an impressive feat for this almost extinct tiger group (surviving only in Sumatra).

Thanks for the clarification on the case of the leopard killing an eland, so at the end it was a lucky shot for the great cat. Reply