Big cat and Bear tale

[brotherbear]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281480792_Relationship_of_bears_and_tigers_in_the_Russian_Far_East 

51 long term monitoring of prey species, habitat type and mitigation measures is proposed to take up for proper conservation and management plan. 2006 Relationship of Bears and Tigers in the Russian Far East Ivan Seryodkin1, Yuri Petrunenko1, Dale Miquelle2, 1Pacific Geographical Institute, FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russian Federation; 2Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, NY, Contact: [email protected] In the southern Russian Far East, brown bears (Ursus arctos) and Asiatic black bears (U. thibetanus) co-exist with Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica). In the Sikhote-Alin Reserve the relationships between these three species were studied in 1992-2013 during extensive telemetry and snow-tracking efforts. Bears often fed on Amur tiger kills. Of the 353 tiger kills we found during the non-denning period for bears (April-November) 62 kills (17.6%) were used by bears including 37 (60%) brown bear, 9 (14%) by Asiatic black beer and 16 (26%) of uncertain bear species. The proportion of tiger prey scavenged by bears is likely higher than what our data indicate, since utilization by scavengers was not always complete when we visited kills. Often bears fed on kills after tigers abandoned them. However, in at least in 8 cases (12.9%) bears displaced tigers from a kill, and in 7 cases (11.3%) both tigers and bears utilized a kill during the same period. Analysis of prey items revealed that bears represent 3.4% in the diet of tigers in the non-denning period (1.7% for each species of bears). In 44 recorded encounters between tigers and bears, the tiger initiated contact in 12 cases while the bear initiated contact in 8 cases, while in all other cases the individual initiating contact could not be determined. Reply