Lions and Tigers in India

[GuateGojira]

In all habitats, tiger do search for the largest prey, they most, as only small prey don’t allow them to breed or to reach them full development. Is like people, in places with less food, people is many times malnourished and they height is small.
 
Most of studies about tiger food are biased toward small prey because they use only scats in the analyses. That is why we found average prey of c.60 kg in places like Chitwan or Nagarahole. However, if only principal prey is used, the figures are around 90-100 kg in both areas, again using only scats. The interesting thing is that c.95 kg is the weight of a male chital deer, which is the most common prey in both places (in fact, in ALL places in India), so it makes sense that tigers prey on animals at c.90-100 kg on average.
 
However, take in count that in Nagarahole, tigers search and hunt more Sambar and gaur despite its low density, which suggest that tigers like more a large prey that can feed them for several days without expending too much energy. That is why tigers prefer the larger prey when they can, but if they are searching prey in the field and the only that they found is chital, they will surely hunt them.
 
About the rhinos, there are no reports of tigers killing adult ones in Chitwan, as far I know. Your theory about why tigers do hunt adult rhinos in Kaziranga is plausible, after all, they can show to the females that they are the perfect dominant male for the area. Like Dr Karanth say, this make perfect evolutionary sense.
 
Out of topic, but still relevant, lion studies that show prey of over 200 kg like average use only kill sample, not scats. Even Schaller accept this, as the scats in the climate of Africa disappear much faster and then, it is impossible to use it. This is why is NOT correct, nor fair, to compare these lion studies that use kills with those of the tiger which use only scats. Besides, most of the hunts of the lions are in group (they hunt in group and they need to feed the entire group) and most of the lion habitats have both zebra and wildebeest, without mentioning all the large array of antelopes, including the large eland, while on the tiger side Sambar is the only animal that can surpass the 250 kg in most of the habitats (Nilgai, buffalo and gaur are extinct in most of the parks of India, or live in very low densities). In this case, it is obvious that lions will hunt larger prey, but this is NOT an advantage, it is simply “Ecology”. By the way, check that in any part of the documents about lions say that those “average” prey of 399 kg (for males) is taken for a single male, in fact it say that this kills were recorded also in lions groups. Again, a deep reading and interpretation of the documents is fundamental.
 
Let’s hope this reflection will help in future comparisons. If someone wants to compare lion with tiger prey selection, use scats with scats and kills with kills.
 
The page where I found the book “Riding the tiger” was “21 century tigers”, here is the link: http://www.21stcenturytiger.org/
 
Sadly, I think that they no longer provide this book by free, I download it in 2005. Probably when they changed the page, the link was broken and the archive lost.
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