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behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator?
behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator?
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behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator?
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jackals biting and attacking a hyena is compleatly different from hyenas attacking a male lion.
Jackals small extreamly quick and faster than a hyena. and lions are bigger and much quicker and faster than hyenas. but it's not that hyenas will not protect their own even against a male lion, it's much more risky and carful but it does happen here in this video. lion kills one and only two hyenas comes back. that's impressive. 
Watch towards the end of the grizzly vs wolf video ( post #30 ); the big male grizzly took the carcass from a pack of 14 grey wolves unchallenged. A large healthy male grizzly can displace a wolfpack regardless of their numbers. Grizzly bears are not great hunters, but they do however benefit from the presence of the more accomplished hunters.
 (06-12-2015, 05:14 AM)'Pantherinae' Wrote: jackals biting and attacking a hyena is compleatly different from hyenas attacking a male lion. A slight nip and run is completely different than constant persistance and attempting to save the baby in the midst of no hope. Where were the hyenas when the lion first attacked? Hyena offer the same risk to jackals as lions do to hyena, Death. Still, for two hyena to even come back and attempt it is still impressive, but I think in terms of what can be done, a hyena is far more equipped to do damage to a lion than a jackal is equipped to do damage to a Hyena. Hyena can kill Lions, jackals cannot kill hyena, no matter the number. @ I watched the end of the doc, 14 individuals is not 20 or more, thats why I said "if they have enough #s" but In the same doc, wolf packs ran off multiple male grizzlies. Both examples are proven, both have occured. But the fact that they can run them off at all is impressive considering the immense size difference between the two.
There is a difference between a male grizzly and a healthy fully mature male grizzly. Brown bears mature slowly. There will always be more sub-adults under the age of nine years old than those big adults above the age of nine. I have watched numerous documentaries which stated ( as the video you posted does ) that the big male grizzly will go unchallenged. Six more wolves would have changed nothing.
Im not ready to state that 40% more mouths and Teeth will change nothing. If 10 wolves can run off a grizzly like in Jackson Hole, than 20 can do it as well.
A van sized bear, no, probably not, don't think any thing can run him off. But the bears that they compete against in the same areas, yes, I think they can. Certainly not kill but definitely can employ a nasty hit and run tactic until the bear has had enough.   *This image is copyright of its original author This seems pretty impressive.... Not sure if killed or the Puma is scavenging. If it is a kill then it is very impressive.  *This image is copyright of its original author And this one too.. 
As far I know, there are cases of pumas killing fully grow red deer (elk in the USA) which can weight up to 400 kg and I remember that I read somewhere that they had a percentage of success at kills of up to 85%! If this is correct, pumas are among (if not) the greatest hunters in the cat family. Only the tiger had such a high numbers, with success of up to 50% killing red deer in Russia and a ratio of up to 1/5 against its largest prey (tiger/gaur), in single combat.
Cougars also kill horses, both domestic and feral which can also be dangerous prey and probably near the size range of elk. I read of one event where a big grizzly attacked a horse and it ended up with the horse killing the bear. In the same book, I believe it is in 'Man Meets Grizzly' by F.M.Young ( I have several ), it states that some horses know how to fight and some do not. Those that do can often fend off predators. I also remember reading that probably, during the Pleistocene, American horses were likely preyed upon by cougars and hunting them may be instinctive to the big cat.
I have found this document, about the relation of wolves and pumas in Yellowstone:
http://www.panthera.org/sites/default/fi...dium=email Evidence suggest that, despite the random events of pumas killing loner wolves, is the wolf which is affecting the behavior of the pumas. It seems logic, after all, these are similar sized predators and the wolves normally lives in group while the puma don't. Take a read and present your own conclusions. 
That's a cougar scavenging a domestic Angus bull, the carcass was also later visited by a male wolf.
http://missoulian.com/news/local/gray-wo...03286.html
~~Grizzly Years by Doug peacock. The Bitter Creek Grizzly was the only bear I knew of in Yellowstone that regularly killed moose and bison. He attacked younger animals - ambushed them from nearby timber, then dragged them back into the trees, sometimes covering the carcasses with dirt and sticks. I had seen this too many times to believe that these animals had all conveniently died during the winter. His was not the usual pattern of predation for grizzlies. In 1977, when I first crossed paths with the Bitter Creek Griz, a biologist had found another grizzly who had passed up many carcasses for live elk: The bear liked to kill what he ate. A few bears learn to kill healthy adult elk during all seasons, and cow-struck bulls during the rut were especially stupid and approachable. Yellowstone grizzlies also prey on elk calves, as they do caribou calves in Alaska, and moose calves in both places. Adult moose were generally a match for a grizzly except when snows were deep and lightly crusted: grizzlies can walk lightly over a thin crust, distributing their weight evenly on their plantigrade feet, and they glide over the top of deep drifts in which moose wallow. I thought that grizzly predation was not as common here as it had been a decade or more ago. The predatory segment of the population had probably been killed off selectively, and continues to be culled as they were born into it, because predatory bears are bolder and more visible. The Bitter Creek Griz was a holdover from the days when bears could afford to be bold and aggressive. Which served, as it always had, an important ecological function vital to survival of the species.
what do we mean by impressive predator?
If the criteria are its effects on the prey species, how much of prey it will kill in a given ecosystem then the supreme predators are as follows : North America : 1-Wolf packs 2-Polar bear 3-Cougar 4-Brown Bear 5-Black Bear Neotropics: 1-Jaguar 2-Cougar 3-Ocelot 4-Crocodilians 5-Anaconda Sub-Saharan Africa: 1-Lion 2-Spotted Hyena 3-Leopard 4- Cheetah 5- Wild Dog Tropical Asia: 1-Tiger 2-Leopard 3-Dhole 4- Clouded Leopard 5-Bears Eurasia 1- Wolf packs 2-Polar Bears 3-Brown Bear 4- Asiatic black bear 5-Lynx Note: restricted distribution animals like Gir lions, Amur tigers, Amur leopards were excluded. These are the predators considered when we conduct conservation studies to evaluate prospects for predators. I would put wolves before bears
Now if impressive means largest recorded prey to predator size:
African male lion on subadult elephant ( 180 kg to 2000 kg) ( Ross in Predators) African male leopard on eland bull ( Kingdon 70 kg to 400 to 900 kg not much detail given in this solitary event) Canadian male puma on elk bull ( 80 kg to 300 kg) Snow Leopard female on male ibex ( 35 kg to 75 kg) Male Bengal tiger on female Indian rhino ( 200 kg to 1400 kg) Male timber wolf on subadult bison ( 75 kg on 300 kg) Frozen Planet Female spotted hyena on wildebeest bull ( 70 kg to 270 kg) Male grizzly bear on adult moose (300 kg to 600 kg) Male Alaskan black bear on female moose ( 200 kg to 400 kg) All are great but check this out: Stoat 100 grams on rabbit 2 kg!!! (10-24-2015, 04:35 PM)Dr Panthera Wrote: Now if impressive means largest recorded prey to predator size: The case of the "single" lion and the elephant is rare and should have backup with data, subadult-adult elephants are only killed by group of lions (cubs of 600 kg or less can be killed by single lions if they have the chance), definitely a single lion can't kill a 2,000 kg elephant, but three or more surely can. I don't know of any case of a male or female lion killing a rhino in single combat in Africa, so I think that the extreme case of lion predation would be a male lion vs a large male African buffalo (185 to 450 kg Ave. or 250 to 900 kg Max.) The case of the leopard is also weird and we will need more evidence. Health state of the eland and true age and size are very relevant here. Normally, about 200 kg seems the normal limit for a large leopard in any territory. I think that the most extreme case of one-to-one predation case are those of the puma and elk bull. There is video evidence of 60-90 kg pumas killing 300-400 kg male elks (if not slightly heavier). For tigers, Dr Karanth said that the normal extreme case are tigers with bull gaur (260 to 1,000 kg). I don't remember if the rhinos killed in India were hunted by individual or pair of tigers, @Pckts should know this. Also, what about the jaguars and the tapir, or the domestic cattle? That is also a great feat. Tapir can weight over 300 kg in Central and South America and as far I remember, there are some cases of large jaguars (over 100 kg) killing male zebu of over 700 kg. Let's add the cases of Javanese tigers killing male banteng, in documented cases (140 to 700 kg). (10-25-2015, 11:54 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:I have a picture of a lone male lion killing a subadult elephant ( I will post it next week when I am back in town) it is from the book Predators by Ross, subadult African elephants can be anything from 1500 to 3000 kg so it is just his estimate.(10-24-2015, 04:35 PM)Dr Panthera Wrote: Now if impressive means largest recorded prey to predator size: The more likely limit of a single lion kill is an adult bull giraffe this has been reported from Tanzania but is also extremely rare since lone lions are usually nomads that do not want noisy , protracted kills that will bring the attention of resident lions. Bull Eland kills are also reported. All of these instances are extreme cases showing the upper limit of predation and do not constitute 1% of all actual kills, the big cats are great successful predators but they do not want to risk injury or waste energy in futile hunts...so lions hunt probably a thousand wildebeest for every elephant and tigers take a thousand chital for every rhino. Anybody has accounts of jaguar predation on adult tapirs? I have seen records from several areas in Brazil but those were scat analysis studies so we can not determine the age of the tapir ( or even rule out scavenging). All big cats are successful predators of domestic cattle, yak, buffalo, and Seladang ...it is astonishing how much easier is to kill domestic animals versus wild ones of comparable size! Even lone cheetahs have killed female waterbuck so some individual cats and prides and coalitions push the limit from time to time yet all of them prefer kills of about half of the predator size on their day to day hunts. Incidentally the eland killed by a leopard was spooked by the leopard jumping down from a tree, the eland ran down a hill on rough terrain, fell and broke its leg...the leopard killed the immobilized eland...very much like when Joubert reported Savute lions killing an injured bull elephant...those are opportunistic kills when the victim was a huge disadvantage. |
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