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

[Balam]

Quote:Lol at nitpicking a small word.

Confirmed by the same guy in California in a peer-reviewed source.

Here is the quoted literature from the NatGeo article:

Bischoff-Mattson Z, Mattson D. 2009. Effects of simulated mountain lion caching on decomposition of ungulate carcasses. Western North American Naturalist 69:343-350.


Elbroch, L.M., Lendrum, P.E., Allen, M.L., Wittmer, H.U., 2014. Nowhere to hide: pumas, black bears, and competition refuges. Behavioral Ecology DOI:10.1093/beheco/aru189.

Hayward MW, Hofmeyr M, O’Brien J, Kerley GIH. 2006. Prey preferences of the cheetah Acinonyx jubatus Felidae: Carnivora: morphological limitations or the need to capture rapidly consumable prey before kleptoparasites arrive? Journal of Zoology 270:615–627.

Ray RR, Seibold H, Heurich M.  2014. Invertebrates outcompete vertebrate facultative scavengers in simulated lynx kills in the Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany. Anim Biodiversity and Conservation 37:77-88.

The paper you reposted is not included here, so you do not actually know if this is the same instance as the other one, you're simply guessing. Furthermore, even if that was the case, in the NatGeo article which Dr. Elbroch - one of the most renowned cougar biologists - himself wrote, more details are given about the interaction between the two Carnivorans, and he specified they were both adults. Unlike your attempt at drawing conclusions of kills based on no evidence (see the leopard/crocodile Sri Lanka interaction), I can in fact echo the claims of the experts who documented these incidents first hand. Unless you have solid evidence against the contrary, reposting the same article over and over again will do nothing to help your case.

Quote:Well, actually Hyenas rarely went for the adult Camels, which indicates that adult Camel are still tough.

Hyenas are not the best at killing large ungulates solo, very rarely do they go out of their way to bring down antelopes such as kudu on their own, something that cheetahs seem to do without a problem. Hyenas can certainly do so, but they would rather scavenge than actively hunt.

Quote:Also, the Guanaco were weakened by winter at the time.
While Guanaco were tough during a , a minority of them were taken by Mountain Lions.

"Overall, adult guanacos experienced surprisingly lower levels of mortality (adult male = 1%, adult female = 2%) than expected, despite the severe winter conditions, while juveniles experienced higher levels of mortality (13%) than expected"

So it seems that the weakest ones during a winter storm were picked out by Cougars at the time. 

Wait did you even bother to read what the paper you're quoting actually said? *facepalm*, the paper is not mentioning low mortality rates due to cougar predation, but due to the winter, cougar predation was in fact the overwhelming cause of mortality among guanacos:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

It didn't "seem" like anything, according to this study itself, cougars targeted adults at a 42% rate despite the fact that adults did not suffer greatly from environmental conditions to the same degree that juveniles did. Your whole theory of cougars targeting guanacos during winter because they were weakened is another one of your fabrications. Cougars target guanacos all year round, in fact, in this report the absolute predation values on guanacos were higher during summer than during winter:

*This image is copyright of its original author

In different studies, it is in fact mentioned that cougars were at a disadvantage during winter times when hunting guanaco, and youngsters were selected over adults due to their lack of experience scaping and fending off predators:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Once again this other study mentions that adult guanacos have very low death rates during winter, this does not substantiate that they were weakened by it, only juveniles were more prone to die as a result of environmental factors:

*This image is copyright of its original author

By contrast, the domestic camels in Kenya had a whopping 50% mortality rate thanks to causes unrelated to predation and related to environmental constraints and diseases. The fact that you even tried to draw a parallel between these very obviously malnourished and decaying domestic camels, with healthy guanacos in the wild is incredible but not unsurprising.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Quote:It is a tit for tat that both the Leopard and Cougar took on the weakest of the Camelids at the time.

It's not, cougars killed healthy adult guanacos at only a slightly smaller rate than inexperienced and weakened juveniles, while leopards killed domestic camels that were decayed and dehydrated. There's no tit for tat here.

Quote:LOL, the 267 kg is an adjusted weight that includes adults, juvenile and sub-adults.

LOL and why didn't you show the complete paragraph?

*This image is copyright of its original author

The adult eland cows killed by leopards were only two, if their biomass would've been substantially greater than 300 kg, then the overall average in the study would have been larger as well, and 267 kg is only 11% less than 300 kg. The adults killed by the leopards were not huge, which is to be expected since eland show drastic size variations as they age. All other kills belonged to or were assumed to be from juveniles.

Quote:So, I can see a Leopard taking down a smaller Bull Eland that is 450 kg or just a bit above 500 kg.

I'm sure you can see this happening, it has yet to be documented in real life though.

Quote:To be fair, adult Horses do not have much of a sexual dimorphism, so there is no major weight difference between the two sexes. In fact, Knopf put the two adult sexes as having the same weight.

Also, Cougars rarely go for adults while focusing on juveniles and sub-adults. This is probably akin to Leopards.

The point is that you do not have nearly the same amount of data for leopard predation on feral horses and their age classes as we do for cougars, not to worry though because leopards overlap greatly in occurrence with zebra, who are smaller than mustangs, but nonetheless should provide us with good data on the kinds of animals leopards go after:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Leopard predation on zebra has been almost completely focused on juveniles and foals, cougars killed more sub-adult and adult horses by comparison throughout Alberta and have been linked to limiting the herd sizes of horses in the Patagonia. They are specialized equid hunters.

Quote:That is the point. Leopards and Cougars have big kills. However, Lions and Tigers take on the biggest/most dangerous prey of the Big Cats.
In terms of impressive kills, no single predator compares to the two, outside of the Polar Bear.

My only point here was to clarify the impressions you tried to push in your previous posts. From the attempted dismissal of moose predation by cougars incorrectly claiming they only killed shiras specimens and without pointing out that female cougars targeted the moose as well, to showing deceptive "size comparisons" that involved sub-adult guanacos next cougars and adult camels next to leopards, the intention with that was rather clear. You can try to hype the leopards up all you want, bringing unrelated species to the posts to conflate cherry-picked pictures and data as a means of making the leopard seem more powerful is nothing short of desperation, particularly when we look into the data in more detail and realize that your conclusions couldn't be more wrong. Reply