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

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

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behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - Pantherinae - 05-28-2015

wanna discuss which carnivorus mammal on land whio's the most impressive after the 3 biggest cat's (lion, tiger and jaguar)
and all bears (except the sun bear)? let me hear you're opinions

obvious contenders are
-leopard
-cougar
-wolf
-spotted hyena

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - faess - 05-28-2015

I think Cougars are pound for pound one of the best hunters and I would have them top 3 for sure, including lions and tigers. Their success rate and ability to kill big ungulates by snapping their necks is impressive.

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - Pckts - 05-28-2015

Leopards are the most impressive hunters of all IMO, I put Cougars right up there with Leopards but not quite as equipped as leopards when discussing weapons and strength.
That is strictly Lone Killers

Pack hunters are a different story,
No animal wants to face a wolf pack or wild dog pack. I think both are just built to wear you down, they can track you for days and their stamina is 2nd to none, I give the edge to wolf packs due to their size.

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - faess - 06-06-2015

*This image is copyright of its original author

Leopards need to step it up

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - Pantherinae - 06-06-2015

a little silly comment @faess, such kind of comments will lead to heated debates, but what a great picture TFS.

but to answer. don't you think a leopard would kill a wolf? there are actually pictures of a leopard who has battled down a quite big hyena.
a single hyena is a much harder apponent than a lone wolf,

*This image is copyright of its original author

Cougar need to step it up.

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - brotherbear - 06-06-2015

~wanna discuss which carnivorus mammal on land whio's the most impressive after the 3 biggest cat's (lion, tiger and jaguar)
and all bears (except the sun bear)? let me hear you're opinions.

The big cats are more efficient predators than bears ( sun bear being no exception ).

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - faess - 06-06-2015

(06-06-2015, 04:43 PM)'Pantherinae' Wrote: a little silly comment @faess, such kind of comments will lead to heated debates, but what a great picture TFS.

but to answer. don't you think a leopard would kill a wolf? there are actually pictures of a leopard who has battled down a quite big hyena.
a single hyena is a much harder apponent than a lone wolf,

*This image is copyright of its original author

Cougar need to step it up.

Its pretty much a fact that Cougars have killed bears and wolves a lot more than leopards kill other predators around the same size. If you look in one of the earlier pages of edge of extinction, you read a brief description of the Leopard being less confrontational than a Tiger.

This lion doesn’t run, instead kills, eats wolf
Wild-eyed research cat stripped lobo to the bone, researcher says.

Mark Elbroch/Teton Cougar Project

POSTED: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2013 12:15 AM
By Mike Koshmrl | 3 comments

Five mountain lion cubs mothered by Teton Cougar Project research animals have met their ends in the jaws of wolves over the past few years.
Now a Jackson Hole female cougar appears to have exacted vengeance.
A lion tracked by the Kelly-based science institute for the past six years is documented to have recently dined on a yearling wolf, Cougar Project biologist Mark Elbroch says.
“What’s nice about this particular incident is that this is a collared mountain lion, and we know for sure that she killed it,” Elbroch said. “This is just a very nice, clear case.”
The wolf-killer, known as F109, is a 101-pound female that lives in the Gros Ventre River headwaters. She’s a “funky-looking, overly feral cat” that’s as smart as they come and near impossible to catch, Elbroch said.
While hiking with colleagues early last month, Elbroch discovered the cached remains of the young wolf while on a routine visit to check a suspected F109 kill site.

A bloody scene, and a surprise
After a 2 1/2-hour uphill hike through snow, the team of biologists came across an ominous sign, Elbroch said.
“There were wolf tracks everywhere,” he said. “Not just one wolf, but a full pack with pups and subadults.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh gosh, this is not good,’ because she had kittens at the time that were small and defenseless,” Elbroch said.
The biologists saw lion tracks, then blood, then a jet black pelt at the base of a subalpine fir tree.
Though dead only a day, the wolf was nearly consumed, Elbroch said.
“You don’t expect it to be a wolf,” Elbroch said. “The one really intact part of the carcass was the skull.
“We were able to clean it off, and there’s no denying what it was,” he said. “It was a wolf born this year.”
That meant the wolf pup was already larger than a normal-size coyote.
While not unheard of, proven cases of lions killing wolves are far from normal, scientific literature shows. Wolves killing lions — evidenced by the Cougar Project’s experiences — is much more common.
Through 2008 there were three reports of cougars killing wolves in North America, Jackson Hole resident and biologist Mike Jimenez wrote in a short entry to The Canadian Field-Naturalist. One of the unlucky lobos was one of the original Yellowstone imports — Wolf B-4.

Top dog sometimes loses
In early 1996, B-4’s radio collar was detected sending out a mortality signal near Drummond, Mont.
In 2003 a cougar-killed female wolf was found in Paradise Valley north of Gardiner, Mont. In 2006 a healthy male wolf killed by a lion was found in Alberta’s Turner Valley.
More recently, in early 2012, a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wolf biologist reported that two of her radio-collared wolves had turned up dead with trauma consistent with a lion attack.
It’s much more common for wolves, a pack animal, to force lions to flee when the two large carnivores cross paths, Elbroch said. Typically, he said, the wolves chase off the lions.
“The scientific conclusion out there is that they interact as competitors,” he said. “Neither one is trying to catch the other as a prey source.”
That F109 and cubs consumed the wolf pup is a case of “interguild predation,” Elbroch said.
Only on one occasion — a fox — has a Teton Cougar Project research animal been documented making a kill and leaving the meat untouched, he said.
Because there was no video, Elbroch isn’t speculating about the encounter between F109 and the wolf pack.
“Perhaps the wolves had challenged F109, or perhaps just one of them wandered too close to her kittens, or perhaps a pup felt like exploring on its own — trying to decipher the absolute pandemonium of tracks was beyond us,” he wrote in a recent NationalGeographic.com blog post.
If the young wolf had wandered from the pack, maybe it appeared an easy meal. Elbroch said mountain lions are opportunistic killers, and they typically are not choosy about prey.
“If it’s a single wolf and everything’s perfect, why not?” he said.

http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/environmental/this-lion-doesn-t-run-instead-kills-eats-wolf/article_bdf4e68b-49d2-52b7-af68-302a559a9361.html

"Here is your Monday morning video. In this one F109 visits a kill site from F61. The main feature of this clip is near the end when F109 performs a scrape with her hind feet. Cougars scrape to communicate their presence, breeding status, fitness/dominance and more. It is a fascinating behavior that deserves further study. F109 by the way is an impressive cat - she only weighs 88 pounds and hunts ~600 pound bull elk. She is also the only cat in our study to ever kill a wolf."

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - Pantherinae - 06-06-2015

Yeah I'm not surprised that cougars does kill wolves. Because they are extrodanary killers, in the leopards case leopards imo has tougher opponents, it is extreamly rare they kill hyenas, but hyenas are in a different leauge and much harder to kill than a wolf, and often there are more than one they usually move in group's of 2-8 animals, I don't think they would feel very threatened by cougars neither, but leopards does avoid conflicts with wild dog packs, hyenas and lions all which could also pose a danger to a cougar aswell, I've seen a leopard also defend her kill against a slothbear and cougars against black bears. I've seen cougars chased by coyotes and wolves.. But to be honest ofcourse a cougar would defeat coyotes and also a single wolf if the cougar is big, but so could a leopard. Leopards are sometimes getting chased by wild dogs, but I've seen pictures if wild dogs hanging dead in trees.

I would defenatly without a shadow of a doubt put the leopard as the number 4 cat, ahead of the cougar, but it's my own honest opinion

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - Jubatus - 06-06-2015

I just have to say that Leopards does also kill wolves, In Arabia and India for example. And If a Wolf tired to steal a male Leopards meal like hyenas somtimes does the Wolf would hang dead on a tree branch Within a few minutes

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - faess - 06-06-2015

So what constitutes theleopard being a better predator? Bigger prey? better kill rate? killing other bigger predators? Because can make a case for the mountain lion on all those accounts

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - Pantherinae - 06-06-2015

As I said a leopard could kill all carnivores a cougar can kill, leopards kills smaller prey because it's not just to kill it's also to eat, with high density of lions and hyenas, killing a zebra would just be stupid, it's risky to kill such big prey if you have to high density of medium prey, aswell as killing a zebra would take a lot of time and atract the attention of lions and hyenas, and a leopard can't drag a zebra to safety.. So it's not logic for an African leopard to do it, but it happens that they kill big prey like zebra and wildebeest also reported cases of gorilla and a eland bull predation so....

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - GuateGojira - 06-06-2015

Interesting debate, keep it civil, with no bad words, full with data and evidence, and it will be interesting to see the results.

Leopard or puma, which is the best hunter? [img]images/smilies/huh.gif[/img]

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - faess - 06-06-2015

(06-06-2015, 11:08 PM)'Pantherinae' Wrote: As I said a leopard could kill all carnivores a cougar can kill, leopards kills smaller prey because it's not just to kill it's also to eat, with high density of lions and hyenas, killing a zebra would just be stupid, it's risky to kill such big prey if you have to high density of medium prey, aswell as killing a zebra would take a lot of time and atract the attention of lions and hyenas, and a leopard can't drag a zebra to safety.. So it's not logic for an African leopard to do it, but it happens that they kill big prey like zebra and wildebeest also reported cases of gorilla and a eland bull predation so....

you can't really pick and choose what you want to make a leopard a better predator without evidence. I could also say a cougar can kill all the carnivoras a leopard can kill, but it would just be my opinion. I want to see evidence. I mean how often do you hear of Leopards killing black bears of their size, a matriarch hyena or even sun bears? Plus as far as big animals go, Cougar has a better success rate of killing them. I mean, its not like cougars have it easy too. They have the biggest land carnivore (outside of polar bear) and pack hunters to deal with as well.

"Despite their large size, adult moose can and are killed by mountain lions. Four out of seven radio collared moose
released on the Manti in 1995 were killed by mountain lions. Geist (1998) discussed the efficiency of moose in avoiding pursuing and pack hunting predators such as wolves. However, moose may not be as well adapted to ambush type predators such as the mountain lion."

http://wildlife.utah.gov/hunting/biggame/pdf/moose_plan.pdf

"People wonder if the cats get beat up during the capture process. F47 went and killed this adult moose just a few days after we recollared her. Its the first time we’ve documented a female cougar killing an adult moose on this project. I guess she is feeling ok!"

*This image is copyright of its original author

https://naturalskills.wordpress.com/category/nature-2

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - GuateGojira - 06-07-2015

Let's do something. Why you don't search studies about the prey size hunted by these two predators. Latter, see the percentages and the mean weights of its preys, puma and leopard respectively and present the results. Finally, check how many predators they kill in they environments and compare its sizes and percentages of consumption.

Just for example, leopards deals with small sized bears like the sloth and Malayan bear, big tigers, lions, hyenas, wolves, dholes and even crocodiles, depending of the area. Pumas share the habitat with medium and large sized bears like the black and the brown one (I don't know of any interaction between polar bears and pumas), also there are the wolves and the wolverine (if you think this one could be a true competitor), but apart from that, I don't see any other important competitor (in Florida, alligators could be also competition).

In Central and South America, pumas also share its habitat with jaguars, different crocodiles and large snakes, but in this area, pumas are not the dominant predator, jaguar it is, and don't show the great feats of its brothers of the north.

RE: behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator? - Jubatus - 06-07-2015

The known prey of the leopard ranges from dung beetles (Fey 1964) to adult male eland (Kingdon 1977), which can reach 900 kg (Stuart and Stuart 1992a). Bailey (1993) found that at least 92 prey species have been documented in the leopard’s diet in sub-Saharan Africa. The flexibility of the diet is illustrated by Hamilton’s (1976) analysis of leopard scats from Kenya’s Tsavo West National Park, of which 35% contained rodents, 27% birds, 27% small antelopes, 12% large antelopes, 10% hyraxes and hares, and 18% arthropods. Seidensticker (1991a) and Bailey (1993) reviewed the literature, and concluded that leopards generally focus their hunting activity on locally abundant medium-sized ungulate species in the 20-80 kg range, while opportunistically taking other prey. For example, analysis of leopard scats from a Kruger NP study area found that 67% contained ungulate remains, of which 60% were impala, the most abundant antelope, with adult weights of 40-60 kg. Small mammal remains were found most often in scats of sub-adult leopards, especially females (Bailey 1993). Studies have found average intervals between ungulate kills to range from seven (Bailey 1993) to 12-13 days (Hamilton 1976, Le Roux and Skinner 1989). Bailey (1993) estimated average daily consumption rates at 3.5 kg for adult males and 2.8 kg for females.