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

United States Styx38 Offline
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Leopards and Lions both kill Camels, including adults, in Kenya


*This image is copyright of its original author



"Most of the camels killed by the hyena were young, but the lion and the leopard killed both adults and the young."


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233414346_Challenges_of_camel_production_in_Samburu_District_Kenya


As you can see, Lions had a heavy reference for adult Camels, while Leopards had a slight reference for juveniles and sub-adults.



Now, here is a Cougar kill rate for Guanaco.

"Of the 33 observed mountain lion kills, 26 were successfully classi®ed by sex and age class. Adult males composed 15% of the total mountain lion kill, adult females 27% and juveniles 58% (males = 31%, females = 27%; Table 1). Adult males and females were killed by mountain lions less than expected and juveniles were killed c. three times their available proportion in the population (w2= 25.12, d.f. = 2, P < 0.0001; Table 1, Fig. 2)."


https://www.researchgate.net/publication...Park_Chile


As can be seen, adult Camels made up 45% of the total Leopard kill, while adult Guanaco made up 42% of the total Cougar kill.

It is interesting to note the similar kill rate since both the Camel and Guanaco are part of the Camelidae family.
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United States Styx38 Offline
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For visual comparison

Here is a Leopard with a Camel kill.


*This image is copyright of its original author


source:  
https://www.facebook.com/persianleopardprojectpage/photos/a.125532784265855/125532787599188/?type=3&theater


Here is a Cougar with a Guanaco kill.


*This image is copyright of its original author


source:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm3WoaFlrvQ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
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United States Styx38 Offline
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Cougar  killed a sub-adult Bear.


"The usurpation of puma kills was not without risk, as in one instance a puma killed a subadult black bear that had been feeding on its kill."

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ma ... 3d7f51.pdf



Leopard killed a sub-adult Panda.



*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author


source: Giant Pandas (2007) by John Seidensticker and Susan Lumpkin


Leopard killed a sub-adult Sloth Bear.


*This image is copyright of its original author
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Canada Balam Offline
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Here's a better picture showing the size difference between an adult guanaco and a female cougar:


*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Cougars are opportunistic killers like all cats are, they will kill whatever prey they have the easiest access to at all times. That being said, they are very much capable of feeding on larger ungulates so long as they're abundant in the areas in which they live.

In Patagonia cougars overwhelmingly favor the guanaco as their main prey, the sizes of guanacos in Tierra del Fuego, deep in the Patagonia, varies between 100 and 150 kg. From the study: Lama Guanicoe (Müller, 1776) body size in continental Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego:


*This image is copyright of its original author

From the study: Diet of puma (Puma concolor) in sheep ranches of central Patagonia (Argentina):


*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

The study highlights that very large domestic prey like cattle and horses will be targeted selected when guanaco numbers were low, and yet when guanaco and sheep numbers are high, cougars will choose for guanaco rather than sheep, despite guanacos being substantially larger.

Predation on adult guanaco in the Patagonia is performed by both sexes, therefore if we take the baseline average of 120 kg for guanacos in Tierra del Fuego and compare it to the average sizes of cougars in the region:


*This image is copyright of its original author

We get the following aspect ratio: if we assume female cougars to weigh on average 40 kg 1:0.34, or roughly 3 times the cougar's size.
For male cougars with an average weight of around 70 kg, the aspect ratio is 1:0.59, so slightly less than half.
If we use the average female weight of around 40 kg and compare it to a very large guanaco or around 150 kg, the aspect ratio would the most extreme at 1:0.27 or nearly five times the size difference.

Females targeting huge guanacos, exemplifying the drastic size difference:


*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author


*This image is copyright of its original author


*This image is copyright of its original author

A similar ratio could be expected following the size difference between introduced red deer in the Patagonia and cougars. With elk, the size difference would be even greater, and while females will tend to avoid hunting full-grown elk and select for smaller ungulates, the large males do focus on predation on these very large ungulates. 

The article: Ferocious appetites: Study finds mountain lions may be eating more than previously believed, cougars here too focused on juveniles, but the large males went after the larger game:

Knopff basis his conclusions on data collected from more than 1,500 kill sites while tracking 54 cougars with GPS collars. The collars allowed the University of Alberta researchers, including his wife Aliah, to move in quickly after a kill to identify what was taken and by which lion.

.....
The use of GPS collars enabled Knopff and his colleagues to collect more data. As a result, he found that mountain lions killed more deer, elk and moose during the summer by focusing on juveniles and actually killed fewer animals in winter. The information contradicts previous studies conducted in Idaho.
....The mountain lions' prey included deer, elk, bighorn sheep, coyotes, feral horses, beaver and porcupines.
....Adult male cougars can weigh 140 to 165 pounds. One male cougar in Knopff's study tipped the scales at 180 pounds and primarily fed on moose and feral horses. Females typically weigh around 100 pounds. From nose to tail the big cats can measure 6.5 to 10 feet long. The average lifespan for a male is 8 to 10 years, 12 to 14 for females.
.....
“Our kill rate estimates indicate that adult cougars are highly effective predators, killing at rates at the upper end of those recorded for wolves in both frequency and biomass,” Knopff wrote.
.... “We had one male cougar kill 18 moose in less than a year,” Knopff said.

The Albertan moose mentioned in that study is larger than the shiras moose some say cougars exclusively predate on, which is not true.
With Knopff supplementary data from Ongoing Cougar Research in Alberta, Canada, we get further information on the ages of horses killed by cougars specialized on predating the which were mentioned in the article above, and the kills include adult wild horses, who are more difficult to bring down than their domestic counterparts and substantially larger than other free-roaming equids like wild asses:


*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Someone tried to overlook the feats of cougars killing Shiras moose as the moose being "small" (despite the moose surpassing 300 kg in weight), they forgot to mention that the kills performed on those moose were done by females and not just males, and female cougars very rarely weight more than 45 kg.

"People wonder if the cats get beat up during the capture process. F47 went and killed this adult moose just a few days after we recollared her. Its the first time we’ve documented a female cougar killing an adult moose on this project. I guess she is feeling ok!"

The most dramatic kills performed by cougars is that of a female of less than 50 kg recorded bringing down bull elk, she was also reported to have killed a yearling wolf, credits to faess for saving excerpt:

"Here is your Monday morning video. In this one F109 visits a kill site from F61. The main feature of this clip is near the end when F109 performs a scrape with her hind feet. Cougars scrape to communicate their presence, breeding status, fitness/dominance and more. It is a fascinating behavior that deserves further study. F109 by the way is an impressive cat - she only weighs 88 pounds and hunts ~600 pound bull elk. She is also the only cat in our study to ever kill a wolf."

I posted this recently on the predation thread, a cougar of unknown sex killed an adult cow according to the hunter:

"Thanks to my man Steve and his dogs for getting me my first lion. It killed a full grown cow a week ago and we finally caught up with it today. Craziest hunt I have ever been on!"



*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Lastly, cougars have been recorded killing adult bears, not just sub-adult ones, from the article Mountain Lions Versus Black Bears, and once again it was a female cougar and not a male making the kill:

"So…why don’t mountain lions defend their kills from bears? On occasion, they do. In one case in California, a large female mountain lion was displaced by an average-sized female black bear from a deer kill. The lion abandoned the site for 24 hours, but then looped back to confront the bear. What we found when we visited the kill a week later were the remains of the deer and bear, side by side. But our research has shown that this is the rare encounter. Typically mountain lions hear the approach of the bear, and don’t even stick around to spit and hiss. They just leave. Perhaps the risks of injury in a fight outweigh the loss of a meal."

I'm convinced that for their size, cougars take the largest prey in proportion and with the most regularity, followed closely by the ounce (P. uncia).
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United States Styx38 Offline
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"So…why don’t mountain lions defend their kills from bears? On occasion, they do. In one case in California, a large female mountain lion was displaced by an average-sized female black bear from a deer kill. The lion abandoned the site for 24 hours, but then looped back to confront the bear. What we found when we visited the kill a week later were the remains of the deer and bear, side by side."

Let's see.

Takes place in California? 

Mountain Lion dispersed from kill by Black Bear? 

Mountain Lion came back to kill the Black Bear? 

Mentioned by Mark Elbroch? 



Seems to be the same Bear, but confirmed as a sub-adult in an actual peer reviewed source.



Anyway, back to kills.


1. Camels should at least be comparable to Guanacos. 

They may not be as wild, but they are large (300-600 kg) and dangerous.

A Camel killed a man and chewed his head off.

"It took over 25 people to calm down an aggravated camel who bit off its owner's head in Rajasthan's Barmer district on Saturday, after being left in the sun the whole day with its limbs tied up.


The owner, Urjaram of Mangta village, had forgotten about having left his camel bound in the heat while entertaining guests at his house. TOI reports that when he went to untie it in the evening, the annoyed animal attacked him.



"The animal lifted him by the neck and threw him on to the ground, chewed the body and severed the head," said a villager named Thakara Ram. The camel is said to have attacked Urjaram in the past as well."

https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/came...2016-05-25


Another man killed by a Camel.

"The American owner of a wildlife park in the Mexican resort of Tulum has died after being kicked, bitten and sat on by a camel, and authorities have seized the private facility’s animals pending an investigation"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/o...lum-resort


A Camel bit a man so hard that his eye popped out.


"Animal bite injuries vary according to the geographical distribution, behavior, and anatomy of animals. Human injuries caused by camel bites are relatively rare. They are more common during the rutting season where male camels become more aggressive [1]. Due to the complex mechanism of camel bites, it is usually associated with high morbidity. The head and neck sustain frequent and severe injuries [2]. Injuries may involve facial wounds, skull fractures, intracranial bleeding, and cervical neurovascular injuries [1,2]. Herein, we report a unique case of a patient who sustained multiple camel bites to his face and neck that resulted in left eye evisceration, parotid duct injury, and facial nerve injury. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of globe rupture caused by a camel bite.


The mechanism of camel bite injuries is complex. This includes penetrating and crushing injuries, by the camel's sharp teeth and strong jaws, and blunt injuries when victims are picked up, shaken and thrown by the camels [1,3]. Globe injury caused by a camel bite has not been reported before. Our patient experienced repeated bites that resulted in multiple facial fractures and deep structure injuries involving his left eye and cheek. The camel deeply fixed its jaw in the patient's face using grinding movement that destroyed surrounding bones and intraocular contents and caused globe rupture of the left eye."

source: Balac, Korana, et al. "Globe rupture caused by a camel bite." Trauma case reports 21 (2019): 100202.

You can check the images of the man badly injured, but I am lazy to post them.


Here is a Camel still putting a good fight despite being restrained by a rope and having a slit neck. The slit is for Qurbani, an Islamic ritual of slaughtering animals for Eid al-Adha.




*This image is copyright of its original author








Here is a Camel kicking a man despite having its leg tied for Qurbani.




*This image is copyright of its original author






Now imagine how dangerous a Camel is for the likes of Big Cats, Wolves and Bears without any restraint. 

A smaller Big Cat won't fall down so easily like a man, but the kicking/stomping and biting from a belligerent 300-600 kg Ungulate is still going to be devastating.



2. So male Cougars, which are around 72 kg in Alberta with an 81 kg specimen kill 400+ kg animals like Feral Horse and a the Moose. They did make up <2% of the kills.


That is comparable to the two female Eland.


*This image is copyright of its original author



Aspects of the Ecology of Leopards (Panthera pardus) in the Little Karoo, South Africa by Gareth Mann


"However, two of the eland killed were adult females, suggesting that leopards in the area are capable of killing large prey weighing over 300 kg."


Now, Eland female can also reach and surpass 400 kg, but let us use minimal weights.

500 kg/72 kg = 6.94                            300 kg/41 kg = 7.32



Keep in mind that the male Leopards in the Little Karoo region were averaged at 41 kg, which is among the smallest of subspecies.

They managed to kill 2 female Elands out of 93 kills, so they had a 2.1 % kill rate.

This would mean Leopards and Cougars can kill animals up to around 7 times their weight.



3 a) Speaking of killing large animals, a Leopard killed a Bull Eland around 500+ kg.

It seems to be confirmed in peer reviewed studies.

"Leopards have an extremely catholic diet and have been recorded feeding on 92 prey species in sub-Saharan Africa alone, varying in size from small arthropods to adult male eland, Taurotragus oryx (Bailey 2005)." 

Balme, Guy, Luke Hunter, and R. O. B. Slotow. "Feeding habitat selection by hunting leopards Panthera pardus in a woodland savanna: prey catchability versus abundance." Animal Behaviour 74.3 (2007): 589-598.


Leopards are also reported to kill Feral or Free-ranging Horses.

"On 20 October 2005, an adult horse was killed by a large male. Fresh tracks of an adult female accompanied by a young cub were regularly seen near the kill, but we are not sure if they have fed on the kill."

source: Farhadinia, Mohammad S., Alireza Mahdavi, and Fatemeh Hosseini-Zavarei. "Reproductive ecology of the Persian Leopard, Panthera pardus saxicolor, in Sarigol National Park, northeastern Iran: (Mammalia: Felidae)." Zoology in the Middle East 48.1 (2009): 13-16.





*This image is copyright of its original author



Source: Mammals of the Soviet Union, Volume 2 Part 2 Carnivora (Hyenas and Cats)


The Badkhyz preserve in Turkmenistan and Northeastern Iran tend to have free-ranging Turkmen or Akhal-Teke Horses.


They are about the same size as the Feral Horse of the US.

"Akhal-Teke horses average 15.2 hands (62") at the withers and weigh 900–1,000 pounds (408-454 kg)"

https://livestockconservancy.org/index.p...akhal-teke


"Most wild horses stand 13 to 15 hands high (52-60 inches) and weigh from 700 to 1,000 pounds. "

https://www.blm.gov/programs/wild-horse-...and-burros


b) Ok.

Leopards also go for domestic animals.

E.g. Horses.

Quote:What are the perceived problem predators? Hyenas were thought to prey mostly on cattle (33% of reported kills presumed to be due to hyenas) and donkeys (40%), jackals were implicated most often for goat (69%) and sheep (68%)kills, leopards for horses (50%)



Source: "Cost of carnivore coexistence on communal and resettled land in Namibia" by Niki Rust and Laurie Marker


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247668488_Cost_of_carnivore_coexistence_on_communal_and_resettled_land_in_Namibia


Horse killed by Leopard in India 


*This image is copyright of its original author


source:  Kumar, Devender, 2011, “Study of Leopard Menace, Food Habits and Habitat Parameters in Mandi District, Himachal Pradesh”, thesis PhD, Saurashtra University


Adult Horse killed by Leopard in Iran.


*This image is copyright of its original author




Cows killed by Leopards.


*This image is copyright of its original author



*This image is copyright of its original author




*This image is copyright of its original author



*This image is copyright of its original author






I am also convinced Leopards can take on the largest prey depending on the ecosystem or region. However, the Lion and Tigers take on prey like Gaur, Cape Buffalo, Giraffe and Rhinos.
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Canada Balam Offline
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( This post was last modified: 03-16-2021, 07:36 AM by Balam )

(03-16-2021, 05:54 AM)Styx38 Wrote: "So…why don’t mountain lions defend their kills from bears? On occasion, they do. In one case in California, a large female mountain lion was displaced by an average-sized female black bear from a deer kill. The lion abandoned the site for 24 hours, but then looped back to confront the bear. What we found when we visited the kill a week later were the remains of the deer and bear, side by side."

Let's see.

Takes place in California? 

Mountain Lion dispersed from kill by Black Bear? 

Mountain Lion came back to kill the Black Bear? 

Mentioned by Mark Elbroch? 



Seems to be the same Bear, but confirmed as a sub-adult in an actual peer reviewed source.



Anyway, back to kills.


1. Camels should at least be comparable to Guanacos. 

They may not be as wild, but they are large (300-600 kg) and dangerous.

A Camel killed a man and chewed his head off.

"It took over 25 people to calm down an aggravated camel who bit off its owner's head in Rajasthan's Barmer district on Saturday, after being left in the sun the whole day with its limbs tied up.


The owner, Urjaram of Mangta village, had forgotten about having left his camel bound in the heat while entertaining guests at his house. TOI reports that when he went to untie it in the evening, the annoyed animal attacked him.



"The animal lifted him by the neck and threw him on to the ground, chewed the body and severed the head," said a villager named Thakara Ram. The camel is said to have attacked Urjaram in the past as well."

https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/came...2016-05-25


Another man killed by a Camel.

"The American owner of a wildlife park in the Mexican resort of Tulum has died after being kicked, bitten and sat on by a camel, and authorities have seized the private facility’s animals pending an investigation"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/o...lum-resort


A Camel bit a man so hard that his eye popped out.


"Animal bite injuries vary according to the geographical distribution, behavior, and anatomy of animals. Human injuries caused by camel bites are relatively rare. They are more common during the rutting season where male camels become more aggressive [1]. Due to the complex mechanism of camel bites, it is usually associated with high morbidity. The head and neck sustain frequent and severe injuries [2]. Injuries may involve facial wounds, skull fractures, intracranial bleeding, and cervical neurovascular injuries [1,2]. Herein, we report a unique case of a patient who sustained multiple camel bites to his face and neck that resulted in left eye evisceration, parotid duct injury, and facial nerve injury. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of globe rupture caused by a camel bite.


The mechanism of camel bite injuries is complex. This includes penetrating and crushing injuries, by the camel's sharp teeth and strong jaws, and blunt injuries when victims are picked up, shaken and thrown by the camels [1,3]. Globe injury caused by a camel bite has not been reported before. Our patient experienced repeated bites that resulted in multiple facial fractures and deep structure injuries involving his left eye and cheek. The camel deeply fixed its jaw in the patient's face using grinding movement that destroyed surrounding bones and intraocular contents and caused globe rupture of the left eye."

source: Balac, Korana, et al. "Globe rupture caused by a camel bite." Trauma case reports 21 (2019): 100202.

You can check the images of the man badly injured, but I am lazy to post them.


Here is a Camel still putting a good fight despite being restrained by a rope and having a slit neck. The slit is for Qurbani, an Islamic ritual of slaughtering animals for Eid al-Adha.




*This image is copyright of its original author








Here is a Camel kicking a man despite having its leg tied for Qurbani.




*This image is copyright of its original author






Now imagine how dangerous a Camel is for the likes of Big Cats, Wolves and Bears without any restraint. 

A smaller Big Cat won't fall down so easily like a man, but the kicking/stomping and biting from a belligerent 300-600 kg Ungulate is still going to be devastating.



2. So male Cougars, which are around 72 kg in Alberta with an 81 kg specimen kill 400+ kg animals like Feral Horse and a the Moose. They did make up <2% of the kills.


That is comparable to the two female Eland.


*This image is copyright of its original author



Aspects of the Ecology of Leopards (Panthera pardus) in the Little Karoo, South Africa by Gareth Mann


"However, two of the eland killed were adult females, suggesting that leopards in the area are capable of killing large prey weighing over 300 kg."


Now, Eland female can also reach and surpass 400 kg, but let us use minimal weights.

500 kg/72 kg = 6.94                            300 kg/41 kg = 7.32



Keep in mind that the male Leopards in the Little Karoo region were averaged at 41 kg, which is among the smallest of subspecies.

They managed to kill 2 female Elands out of 93 kills, so they had a 2.1 % kill rate.

This would mean Leopards and Cougars can kill animals up to around 7 times their weight.



3 a) Speaking of killing large animals, a Leopard killed a Bull Eland around 500+ kg.

It seems to be confirmed in peer reviewed studies.

"Leopards have an extremely catholic diet and have been recorded feeding on 92 prey species in sub-Saharan Africa alone, varying in size from small arthropods to adult male eland, Taurotragus oryx (Bailey 2005)." 

Balme, Guy, Luke Hunter, and R. O. B. Slotow. "Feeding habitat selection by hunting leopards Panthera pardus in a woodland savanna: prey catchability versus abundance." Animal Behaviour 74.3 (2007): 589-598.


Leopards are also reported to kill Feral or Free-ranging Horses.

"On 20 October 2005, an adult horse was killed by a large male. Fresh tracks of an adult female accompanied by a young cub were regularly seen near the kill, but we are not sure if they have fed on the kill."

source: Farhadinia, Mohammad S., Alireza Mahdavi, and Fatemeh Hosseini-Zavarei. "Reproductive ecology of the Persian Leopard, Panthera pardus saxicolor, in Sarigol National Park, northeastern Iran: (Mammalia: Felidae)." Zoology in the Middle East 48.1 (2009): 13-16.





*This image is copyright of its original author



Source: Mammals of the Soviet Union, Volume 2 Part 2 Carnivora (Hyenas and Cats)


The Badkhyz preserve in Turkmenistan and Northeastern Iran tend to have free-ranging Turkmen or Akhal-Teke Horses.


They are about the same size as the Feral Horse of the US.

"Akhal-Teke horses average 15.2 hands (62") at the withers and weigh 900–1,000 pounds (408-454 kg)"

https://livestockconservancy.org/index.p...akhal-teke


"Most wild horses stand 13 to 15 hands high (52-60 inches) and weigh from 700 to 1,000 pounds. "

https://www.blm.gov/programs/wild-horse-...and-burros


b) Ok.

Leopards also go for domestic animals.

E.g. Horses.

Quote:What are the perceived problem predators? Hyenas were thought to prey mostly on cattle (33% of reported kills presumed to be due to hyenas) and donkeys (40%), jackals were implicated most often for goat (69%) and sheep (68%)kills, leopards for horses (50%)



Source: "Cost of carnivore coexistence on communal and resettled land in Namibia" by Niki Rust and Laurie Marker


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247668488_Cost_of_carnivore_coexistence_on_communal_and_resettled_land_in_Namibia


Horse killed by Leopard in India 


*This image is copyright of its original author


source:  Kumar, Devender, 2011, “Study of Leopard Menace, Food Habits and Habitat Parameters in Mandi District, Himachal Pradesh”, thesis PhD, Saurashtra University


Adult Horse killed by Leopard in Iran.


*This image is copyright of its original author




Cows killed by Leopards.


*This image is copyright of its original author



*This image is copyright of its original author




*This image is copyright of its original author



*This image is copyright of its original author






I am also convinced Leopards can take on the largest prey depending on the ecosystem or region. However, the Lion and Tigers take on prey like Gaur, Cape Buffalo, Giraffe and Rhinos.

Quote:Seems to be the same Bear, but confirmed as a sub-adult in an actual peer reviewed source.

"Seems", so you don't know and are assuming, ok got it.


Quote:1. Camels should at least be comparable to Guanacos. 

They may not be as wild, but they are large (300-600 kg) and dangerous.

A Camel killed a man and chewed his head off.

Bizarre comparison to say the least, I don't know where to begin with.
Humans are fragile and can be killed by almost any committed livestock, showing cases of camels hurting humans to prove that leopards must be so extraordinary to kill them doesn't make those camels any more impressive. Killing livestock and killing a free raging animal are two very different things. In the first paper on camel predation in Kenya, it is stated very clearly that the camels were in dire condition and dehydrated;


*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Not only were these camels suffering from accessing proper nutrients through quality food and water, but being domestic animals entails that they would have almost completely lost the anti-depredatory measures they would have learned in the wild to fend off potential predators, something their free-ranging counterparts (i.e. guanacos), now how to do very well. A smaller but more skilled guanaco that knows how to fight off a predator will forever be more impressive than an emaciated, domesticated camel.

Quote:A smaller Big Cat won't fall down so easily like a man, but the kicking/stomping and biting from a belligerent 300-600 kg Ungulate is still going to be devastating.

Which is something you don't know, they were physically weak and lacked the experience gathered in the wild to know to properly fend off predators. So far it looks like the leopards were smart and took advantage of an easy meal.

Quote:2. So male Cougars, which are around 72 kg in Alberta with an 81 kg specimen kill 400+ kg animals like Feral Horse and a the Moose. They did make up <2% of the kills.

So you read my last post on cougar predation in  Alberta, good. You didn't mention that the 2% figure was only given for animals past 400 kg in weight (i.e. stallions and bull moose), there was another 12% that involved adult wild horses and moose smaller than that figure, but most certainly above 300 kg in weight.

Quote:That is comparable to the two female Eland.
Now, Eland female can also reach and surpass 400 kg, but let us use minimal weights.

The first chart you posted very clearly stated that the average weight for the eland killed by leopards was 267 kg, not 400 kg. Using random literature figures for eland body mass is completely irrelevant to the conversation when the leopards aren't tackling eland of that size class. By contrast, the study of predation by Albertan cougars does detail the weights of 400+ kg for prey items for cougars. Not the same.

From the A Zooniverse Project Blog

"Although life seems good in these juvenile gangs and generally eland are long lived, mortality can be high in youngsters. Whilst studying leopard in South Africa we found eland was a common prey item, in fact we discovered three kills within a month of eland less than six months old and those were just the ones we found. Lion and hyena are also known to take their toll. There is no real synchronised birthing in eland herds with young born at anytime. I guess this means there is always a slightly younger, less savvy, youngster in the crèche that is easy prey for predators."

Leopard predation on eland overwhelmingly focuses on youngsters which is to be expected, with the occasional cow being killed sporadically.

Quote:Speaking of killing large animals, a Leopard killed a Bull Eland around 500+ kg.

This claim comes from the book Large Carnivores of the African Savannas



*This image is copyright of its original author

While a curious tale, there is no physical evidence to corroborate that such kill actually took place. Just because something is included in a peer-reviewed document doesn't mean the entirety of its contents are reliable. For example, the vast majority of peer-reviewed papers quote the maximum size for jaguars as 158 kg and they base that off of a jaguar killed by Sasha Siemel who supposedly weighed that much, the problem is that we don't know if he actually weighed the jaguar or estimated the weighed, nonetheless its been quoted multiple times by the likes of Seymour on important papers. 

It's no different with this case. Bull eland are extremely large and dangerous game that can give trouble to prides of lions, if they truly were in the diets of leopards you would expect to see more cases of said predation documented, and yet it turns out that is not the case. It's curious that the only supposed case of a leopard killing one of the largest bovines in the world is narrated in a book as a story with no tangible evidence behind it. This claim of leopards killing bull eland is no different than the stories of cougars attacking adult bison.

From Kenya once held some of the biggest lion populations in Africa, numbering over Twenty Thousand individuals in the early 1970s


"For a lion to have a meal, it must stalk its prey stealthily, outrun them and pounce on them at the right time and the right places. On this occasion, this particular pride comprising four young adult males and more than seven females had successfully managed to kill an Eland. Elands are Africa’s largest antelopes; a full grown adult bull can weight anything between 400-900 kg’s. It was no easy job killing an Eland and this was demonstrated by the fact that one of the lead male Lion was left nursing a serious injury on its underbelly sustained from the sharp horns of the prey and the omentum was left hanging out. On assessment we concluded that a veterinary surgeon was urgently needed to stitch the wound and return some of the protruding organ back into place."


*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

I can assure you that no leopard in its right mind is messing with this:


*This image is copyright of its original author

Quote:Leopards are also reported to kill Feral or Free-ranging Horses.

I'm sure they do, although the ages are rarely given (only the first excerpt mentions one as an adult) and the sexes of the horses aren't given either to determine how big they could've truly been. We do have that data for cougars.

Quote:Leopards also go for domestic animals.

I never disputed that, domestic and free-ranging animals are two different ball games. One is more docile and lives in a confined environment where a predator can more easily subdue it, the other one is more aggressive and muscled, with natural instincts to defend itself against its natural adversaries.

Quote:I am also convinced Leopards can take on the largest prey depending on the ecosystem or region. However, the Lion and Tigers take on prey like Gaur, Cape Buffalo, Giraffe and Rhinos.

Leopards take on what they can take, gaur, buffalo, giraffe, and rhinos are far beyond the range of what a leopard can hunt. This is why adult buffaloes in places like Sri Lanka are never targeted by leopards despite the absence of tigers, and the supposed predation on banteng in South East Asia actually completely comes from scat sample and not registered kills, there is in fact no documentation of leopards killing adult banteng throughout their range.
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United States Styx38 Offline
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Quote:"Seems", so you don't know and are assuming, ok got it.


Lol at nitpicking a small word.

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


"The usurpation of puma kills was not without risk, as in one instance a puma killed a subadult black bear that had been feeding on its kill."

source: Allen, Maximilian L., L. Mark Elbroch, Christopher C. Wilmers, and Heiko U. Wittmer. "The comparative effects of large carnivores on the acquisition of carrion by scavengers." The American Naturalist 185, no. 6 (2015): 822-833.



Quote:Bizarre comparison to say the least, I don't know where to begin with.

Humans are fragile and can be killed by almost any committed livestock, showing cases of camels hurting humans to prove that leopards must be so extraordinary to kill them doesn't make those camels any more impressive. Killing livestock and killing a free raging animal are two very different things. In the first paper on camel predation in Kenya, it is stated very clearly that the camels were in dire condition and dehydrated;

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

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. 

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



Quote:The first chart you posted very clearly stated that the average weight for the eland killed by leopards was 267 kg, not 400 kg





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



Mann (2014) stated it that in the source:



" When necessary, the biomass of some larger prey items (eland (Tragelaphus oryx), kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) and cattle (Bos taurus) was adjusted to compensate for leopards preying upon juvenile and sub-adult individuals. In the case of juveniles, adult biomass was multiplied by 0.3, while for sub-adults, the adult biomass was multiplied by 0.7 (Radloff & du Toit 2004)."



The guy even specified that adult female Eland are over 300 kg.



Here is the weight range for both sexes.


" Body mass averages 500–600 kg (range, 450–942 kg; no sample size given) for males ;   340–445 kg (range 317–470 kg; no sample size given) for females (Estes 1991). "

Pappas, Lindsay A. "Taurotragus oryx." Mammalian species 2002, no. 689 (2002): 1-5.


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

Of course, a 600-900 kg Eland is not within the realms of a Leopard kill. That is for the Lions...






Quote:I'm sure they do, although the ages are rarely given (only the first excerpt mentions one as an adult) and the sexes of the horses aren't given either to determine how big they could've truly been. We do have that data for cougars.


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.






Quote:I never disputed that, domestic and free-ranging animals are two different ball games. One is more docile and lives in a confined environment where a predator can more easily subdue it, the other one is more aggressive and muscled, with natural instincts to defend itself against its natural adversaries.

Fair point, though they can occasionally kill a predator.



Quote:Leopards take on what they can take, gaur, buffalo, giraffe, and rhinos are far beyond the range of what a leopard can hunt. 

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.
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Canada Balam Offline
Jaguar Enthusiast
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( This post was last modified: 03-18-2021, 04:10 AM by 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 expecteddespite 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.
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United States Styx38 Offline
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( This post was last modified: 06-07-2021, 10:36 AM by Styx38 Edit Reason: Adding more info )

Quote: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. 

Yes, that is the guy who confirmed it was a sub-adult Bear here.

source: Allen, Maximilian L., L. Mark Elbroch, Christopher C. Wilmers, and Heiko U. Wittmer. "The comparative effects of large carnivores on the acquisition of carrion by scavengers." The American Naturalist 185, no. 6 (2015): 822-833.

Also, he was involved with source from 2015, so he confirmed it after the other sources.


The Bear was mentioned to be 3 years of age in one of your sources, so it is a sub-adult.

Black Bear age studies


"We designated bears in their second year of life as yearlings, 2- and 3- year olds as subadults, and >=4-year olds as adults"

source: Lee, Daniel J., and Michael R. Vaughan. “Dispersal Movements by Subadult American Black Bears in Virginia.” Ursus, vol. 14, no. 2, 2003, pp. 162–170. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3873016. Accessed 15 May 2021.



"Survival rates for subadult black bears tend to be lower than for adult black bears in North American populations (Bunnell and Tait 1981, Schwartz andFranzmann 1991, Beringer et al. 1998). Subadult bears, especially males, are capable of traveling long distances and have larger home ranges, making them more susceptible to harvest, automobile collisions, and other anthropogenic of mortality (Schwartz and Franzmann 1992).

"Additionally, we attached ear tag transmitters or radiocollars to a sample of subadult bears during the handling process. All transmitter-equipped 1-, 2-, and 3-year-old males and l-year-old females received ear tag transmitters, while 2- and 3-year-old females received ear tagtransmitters (i.e., bear weight <45 kg) or radiocollars (i.e., bear weight >45 kg)."

source: Lee, Daniel J., and Michael R. Vaughan. "Yearling and subadult black bear survival in a hunted Virginia population." The Journal of wildlife management 69.4 (2005): 1641-1651.



"Black bears will occasionally kill and cannibalize other bears. Most cannibalization documented in Maine has been on subadult bears (2-3 years of age)"

"Adult males (4 years of age and older) often dominate food sources, and adults are known to prey on smaller bears. However, black bears do not actively defend territories."

"Female bears remain within or close to the area they were born in, but males disperse as subadults, usually at 2-4 years of age in Maine (Hugie 1982, MDIFW file data)."

"By the time female bears are adults (4 years of age), their survival increases to nearly 100% in the absence of hunting."

source: McLaughlin, Craig R. Black bear assessment and strategic plan 1999. The Department, 1999



Quote: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.

No mention of lone Hyenas hunting  in that source.

Actually, Hyenas are pretty good at killing adult Wild animals and  Cattle.

Spotted Hyena predation in Ngorongoro Crater.




*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author


Höner, Oliver P., et al. "The response of spotted hyaenas to long‐term changes in prey populations: functional response and interspecific kleptoparasitism." Journal of Animal Ecology 71.2 (2002): 236-246.


Of course, while the most killed animals were adult Wildebeest in both periods, they were the most abundant prey item. They also killed more adult Zebra compared to Zebra foal.


For domestic animals, Hyenas killed adult Cattle and Donkey compared to juveniles.

Hyenas also favored large domestic animal adults, like Cattle and Donkey in Zimbabwe.



"Hyaenas showed strongest selection for donkeys in all sites, while avoiding goats in Tsholotsho and Mvuthu-Shana, but showing weak selection for goats in Mabale. Hyaenas avoided attacking cattle in Mabale and Mvuthu-Shana, but showed some selection for cattle in Tsholotsho. As with lions, most hyaena kills (59.7%) were adult cattle and donkeys."






*This image is copyright of its original author








source: Loveridge, Andrew J., et al. "Bells, bomas and beefsteak: Complex patterns of human-predator conflict at the wildlife-agropastoral interface in Zimbabwe." PeerJ 5 (2017): e2898.











Hyenas killed less adult Cattle than Lions in Tsavo National Park, but still more than Cheetahs.






*This image is copyright of its original author






Patterson, Bruce D., et al. "Livestock predation by lions (Panthera leo) and other carnivores on ranches neighboring Tsavo National Parks, Kenya." Biological conservation 119.4 (2004): 507-516.



Quote: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:

So? 

Adults were killed on a lower level despite the heavy winter.


"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



"Of the 33 observed mountain lion kills, 26 were successfully classi®ed by sex and age class. Adult males composed 15% of the total mountain lion kill, adult females 27% and juveniles 58% (males = 31%, females = 27%; Table 1). Adult males and females were killed by mountain lions less than expected and juveniles were killed c. three times their available proportion in the population (w2= 25.12, d.f. = 2, P < 0.0001; Table 1, Fig. 2)."



Previous research on the effects of mountain lion predation on this same population reported that adult male guanacos were preyed upon less by mountain lions than expected, whereas adult females were killed close to or less than their proportion in the population"


Also, 33 were killed by Mountain Lions, with 26 being confirmed.

So there were about 11 adults killed (0.42 * 26)

Of the adults affected by the winter, only 0.86% were actually killed by the Cougar ((11/1271) * 100).

So a relatively low number of adults were killed by the Mountain Lions.



Guanaco are still heavily weakened during the winter.

"Population dynamics and demography of ungulates are often influenced by age and sex-specific susceptibility to predation (Curio, 1976; Taylor, 1984; Pierce, Bleich & Bowyer, 2000a). Differences in physical condition can increase individual susceptibility to predation because predators may select prey in poor condition in an effort to conserve energy and reduce potential injury (Mech, 1970; Peterson, 1977; Ackerman et al., 1984; Huggard, 1993; Pierce, Bleich & Bowyer, 2000a). During winter, when nutritional quality and abundance of forage decrease, snowfall can limit the amount of range accessible to ungulates (Gilbert, Wallamo & Gill, 1970). Deep snow makes foraging energetically costly and may cause starvation, decrease overall fitness and potentially increase the spread of disease (Jedrzejewski et al., 1992). Following winters with deep snow, population demography can be affected for several years. Surviving animals generally are malnourished, resulting in lower fecundity the next breeding season (Schaller & Junrang, 1988). Furthermore, severe climatic conditions during winter can act either directly or indirectly by making ungulates, such as guanacos Lama guanicoe, more susceptible to predation (Franklin, Johnson et al., 1999; Sarno, Clark et al., 1999)."

https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wi...6902001334


So it is obvious that Mountain Lions killed the Guanaco in the poorest conditions.


The reason why I used Camels was because these kill rates were close. Not to mention these are both Camelidae. 


Quote: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

You missed my original point. It was not to talk about how far away Cows are from the 300 kg minimum, but rather the kill rate proportion comparison.

I'll try clarifying it more:

So male Cougars, which are around 72 kg in Alberta with an 81 kg specimen kill 400+ kg animals like Feral Horse and a the Moose. They did make up <2% of the kills.

Now, Eland female can also reach and surpass 400 kg (300 kg minimum), but let us use minimal weights.



500 kg/72 kg = 6.94                            300 kg/41 kg = 7.32







Keep in mind that the male Leopards in the Little Karoo region were averaged at 41 kg, which is among the smallest of subspecies.



They managed to kill 2 female Elands out of 93 kills, so they had a 2.1 % kill rate.


This would mean Leopards and Cougars can kill animals up to around 7 times their weight at a similar rate (2%).'


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


These estimates were based on these two authors.

This is the lowest estimation of Eland Bull killed by the Leopard.



"A single leopard has been known to bring down a full - grown bull eland , weighing over 454 kg ( 1,000 lb )"



   Wild Cats by Caroline Brett · 1992 · ‎



 "Leopards have been known to kill bull eland weighing 500kg ( 1 , 100lb )"


source: Predators: Great Hunters of the Natural World by Malcolm Penny, ‎Caroline Brett, ‎Gaby Roslin · 1995

Oh, and this feat was even mentioned in a documentary.

At 0:37






The feat has been reported and documented many times, so I am not concerned about your opinion.


Quote: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.

Let's get this right.

 Leopards occasionally kill adult Horses.


"On 20 October 2005, an adult horse was killed by a large male. Fresh tracks of an adult female accompanied by a young cub were regularly seen near the kill, but we are not sure if they have fed on the kill."


source: Farhadinia, Mohammad S., Alireza Mahdavi, and Fatemeh Hosseini-Zavarei. "Reproductive ecology of the Persian Leopard, Panthera pardus saxicolor, in Sarigol National Park, northeastern Iran: (Mammalia: Felidae)." Zoology in the Middle East 48.1 (2009): 13-16.


The source you posted also shows an adult Zebra killed by Leopard, so Leopards can occasionally kill adult Zebra.



*This image is copyright of its original author


source: de Ruiter, Darryl J., and Lee R. Berger. "Leopards as taphonomic agents in dolomitic caves—implications for bone accumulations in the hominid-bearing deposits of South Africa." Journal of Archaeological Science 27.8 (2000): 665-684.


Mountain Lions can occasionally kill adult Horse, as you and other have posted before.



However, they typically focus on juveniles.



Quote:All the horses M166 killed were younger than 14 months. The largest horse he is documented to have killed was about 350 (158 kg) pounds. Mustangs are generally on the smaller side of horses, usually weighing between 700 and 900 pounds. Larger wild horses might weigh 1,000 pounds. Their foals are much smaller, about 100 pounds or less.


https://americanwildhorsecampaign.org/me...ler-horses



"The horses suffer predation by cougars and jaguars in almost natural levels.....with some 70 kgs, the cougar is too small to kill an adult horse, unless the horse is in decaying state, but it does feed on foals."

Translations from the book "Caballos en Compania" where the relations between cougars and wild horses 


"We note that feral horses were absent from the prey killed by cougars during this study. While there was some evidence cougars have preyed on foals before in the area, our study showed cougar predation cannot be consistently counted on to limit this horse population and continued management will be necessary to maintain this population within herd objectives."

Blake, Linsey W., and Eric M. Gese. "Cougar predation rates and prey composition in the Pryor Mountains of Wyoming and Montana." Northwest Science 90.4 (2016): 394-410.


I mean if you want to point out that Cougars are better documented to kill Horses, then I guess you are correct. However, just acknowledge that killing an adult is relatively rare.

Also, Leopards go for sub-adult Wild Cattle.


Quote: 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.



I  will apologize for the sub-adult Guanaco since I was not fully sure about them or their growth stages.

If you want, I will compare wild prey.



Sri Lankan Sambar was found as Leopard diet due to relatively high frequency.

"Sambar are abundant in HPNP, congregating in large herds in the open grasslands. 

Sambar appear to compose the largest proportion of leopard diet here with >75% of scat containing sambar remains (n > 30; Ranawana et al. 1998, Rajapakse 2003)."

source: Kittle, A. M., & Watson, A. C. (2018). "Density of leopards (Panthera pardus kotiya) in Horton Plains National Park in the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka." Mammalia, 82(2), 183-187.


Guanaco was found highly in Cougar diet due to high frequency

"We identified prey remains using reference collections and a hair identification key of mammals (Chehébar and Martín, 1989) Frequency of occurrence was calculated by the number of stomachs/intestines containing a prey item divided by the total number of stomachs/intestines."

"The main prey consumed was the guanaco, both in terms of frequency of occurrence (61.9%)"

" Considering our results, the presence of guanacos -with medium to high occurrence probability in the study area (Pedrana et al., 2019)- may potentially mitigate predation losses as observed for other carnivores and their main wild prey (Meriggi and Lovari, 1996; Stahl et al., 2001). "

Llanos, Romina, and Alejandro Travaini. "Diet of puma (Puma concolor) in sheep ranches of central Patagonia (Argentina)." Journal of Arid Environments 177 (2020): 104145.


Oh wait, you will probably whine that something about the Sambar Deer, so I guess Camel is a better choice.


Oh, and this is the closest comparison to Camelids.

You don't like that?

Peter liked my post.


*This image is copyright of its original author



Sully gave a plus one for my reputation for this post.


*This image is copyright of its original author




Just because you hate it does not mean it is a bad comparison.
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