Can we tell how big cats are doing by the number of wild dogs in the area?

[GuateGojira]

(01-25-2015, 01:19 PM)'peter' Wrote: TIGERS AND DHOLES IN INDIA

Although I agree the much quoted letter about the fight between a male tiger and a dhole pack in the JBNHS was suspect, there's no question dholes chased, fought and killed tigers in the first half of the century in southern India, Guate. It was a rarity, but it happened. Kenneth Anderson delivered unmistakable proof. 

The evolutionary gain (for dholes) is elimination of a competitor, which would result in more food. They paid, but the reward apparently was higher. Tkachenko, in his recent article on Amur tigers in a reserve just north of Khabarowsk (see the tiger extinction thread), wrote Himalayan black bears and brown bears, although they were often taken by tigers in the reserve he studied, didn't hesitate to visit tiger kills. Hunger dominated fear, that is. Access to food is a driving evolutionary factor. It apparently dominates fear. In both bears and dholes.

 

In this occasion, my friend, I am not agree, but I am going to explain why.

Old accounts like those of Kenneth Anderson seems reliable in a normal context, however, sometimes those accounts are not as accurate as we can think. Dr Karanth refer to this event:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

He (Karanth) is very humble saying that his experience is "limited", especially when he spend more time in the forest that any hunter, plus his observations are not anecdotal but from a scientific point of view. In this case, I think that Dr Karanth made a good point on the exaggeration issue of hunters and the use of evolutionary logic. How reliable are the old accounts??? Are they from first hand or just second hand stories that the author only absorbed in his/her tales??? A perfect example is the story of the two tigers and a tusker from Jim Corbett, that at the end, resulted that it was a second hand report.

Other thing, as far I remember, non of the accounts described the age or the health state of the tigers, which is crucial in the account. One say female, the other say male, but in the old tales, hunters never had a good method to estimate the age of tigers and size is not a good method (remember the young subadult tigers from Nepal that already weighed over 200 kg and had the same size than adult tigers, for example).

Finally, food is definitely not a good factor, not in this case. India have "and" had one of the best prey bases, specially in the areas where the tiger-vs-dhole accounts arise. Check the descriptions of Dr Karanth and you will see that even in greater numbers, dholes retire when a tiger arise.

In the worst case, I would agree Mazák (1981):
"It was also reported that a pack of Indian wild dogs or dholes (Cuon alpinus) may exceptionally kill adult tigers (Pocock, 1939). Nonetheless, it seems that wild dogs could kill only ill or otherwise weakened tigers".

Lastly, a final scientific opinion on the issue:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Mazak statement seems to be the most unbiased and give some credit to the old stories, but like Dr Karanth and Dr Tiwari, I now accept that those old accounts seems too suspicions to accept them just like that, especially when in almost 50 years of modern scientific studies, there is not a single case of dholes attacking (not the say killing) any tiger, while on the other hand, there are several cases, scat and kill evidence, of tiger predation over dholes.

Something say to me that the old stories of tigers killed by dholes are the same ones of tigers over 4 m long in Russia. None of them confirmed, and all of them colored with exaggeration.
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