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

[Pckts]

Quote:Ruhana National Park or RNP is in Sri Lanka (no Tigers). That is why Leopards could more frequently kill Sambar Stags

On the other hand, Leopards practically won't touch such large animals in Tiger habitat, as stated by Seidensticker.

So you actually proved my point.

Once again, only 4 out of 44 kill sites contained Sambar and yes, 3 were males and one was a sub adult.
This is a minimal number no different than what is seen elsewhere.
"Despite  potential  bias in  carcass  detection toward larger age/sex classes and a small sample size''

And of course I've already posted Sambar Kills, Male and Female in Tiger dominated territories so we know Seidensticker was wrong in that assessment. On top of kills larger than Sambar Stags in Lion dominated territories. 

Sambar Stag Killed in Ranthambore 

Sambar Stag killed in Nagzira Tiger Reserve 



Try to find any photo or video documentation of Sri Lankan Leopards preying on Sambar, stags or not and you'll have extreme difficulty.

"The preferred and actual weight range of leopard prey throughout its distribution extends from 10 to 40kg with anoptimal weight of 23kg. This is close to the preferred weightdetermined in Mudumalai, India (Ramakrishnan
et al 
.,1999), Ruhuna, Sri Lanka (Santiapillai
et al 
., 1982), Seren-geti (Schaller, 1972), Kruger (Bailey, 1993), the Kalahari(Bothma, 1997) and in the Ituri Forest (Hart
et al 
., 1996).The overall ratio of leopard to optimal prey body mass(based on 0.75
Â
mean adult female mass) is 1:0.79, which lends support to the prediction of Griffiths (1975) that vertebrate predators in prey-rich environments would be energy maximizers and is very similar to that found forleopards in Nagarahole, India (Karanth & Sunquist, 1995)."

Quote:Anyway, can we just form a truce over this.

We've been specifically discussing this and you posted the same thing we've been discussing there, here. I felt it right to respond. Reply