Felids Interactions - Interspecific Conflicts

[Rishi]

(04-21-2019, 04:12 PM)Sanju Wrote: Coexistence of the tiger and the common leopard

Food Habits of Large Carnivores (Leopard and Lion) in Gir National Park and Sanctuary (GNPS), Gujarat, India

Don't bring the discussions back into a same loop. We just covered this; flagship predators coexist with co-predators because the direct competition is less.

Gir, Tanzania etc. will have leopards because the prey availablity is so high that leopards, wild-dogs, hyenas far outbreed the ones being killed. Nonetheless, it is well established (see the studies before) that they do get pushed out in the long-term due to high presence of larger predators.

But in short-term, while a leopard wouldn't confront a dominant tiger for taking sole ownership of the territory, a lion-pair would be tempted to do so (dhole are known to try with tigresses too).
That's the same reason chimpanzees survived homo sapiens, but neanderthals or desnovians didn't. Direct competition between comparable species of similar niches. 

Leopards will keep coexisting with tigers ...& jungle cats will do so in even greater numbers, no matter how many of both the tigers kill off. But lions may cause unforeseen complications.
It's not like we have studies available from 500 years ago. I once pointed out that tigers were commonly depicted in pairs in classical Rajput paintings of arid western India, which could have been a behavioural adaptation due to lions, if accurate.

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