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leopards eating stray dogs in mumbai . helping humans


persephone
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Isn't it unusual for a predator to hunt and eat another predator?
I know that coyotes will take and eat small dogs but I thought that was because when they live near cities there is not a great deal of their natural prey about.
Reading just the headlines I thought that the leopards must be just killing the dogs but the article definitely says that dogs make up 40% of their diet, which is a lot.

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33 minutes ago, RuralPug said:

Isn't it unusual for a predator to hunt and eat another predator?
I know that coyotes will take and eat small dogs but I thought that was because when they live near cities there is not a great deal of their natural prey about.
Reading just the headlines I thought that the leopards must be just killing the dogs but the article definitely says that dogs make up 40% of their diet, which is a lot.

My guess is that the 'balance' has been well & truly tipped  :(  dogs would be breeding uncontrolled , eating lord knows what , plus being cannibalistic . Those leopards are doing everyone a favour , I guess ( until they get rabies :( )

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1 hour ago, RuralPug said:

Isn't it unusual for a predator to hunt and eat another predator?
I know that coyotes will take and eat small dogs but I thought that was because when they live near cities there is not a great deal of their natural prey about.
 

 

I think it's pretty common for top predators to prey on mid-level predators.  A fox, coyote, or dog can have 8+ kits/pups a year.  Historically, Eurasia and North America would be overrun with various canids

if something wasn't killing them.  If hungry, predators generally eat what they kill.

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In Kenya I was told that dog is favourite food for leopard, added to they have a hatred of dogs so will seek them to attack.  One family I was staying with as a house-guest had their dog taken by a leopard, it crashed through the insect-screen of an open widow, grabbed the dog from the room and carried it straight back out.  This was not a farm, a game warden's house in a National Park.

 

(Duck is favourite food for foxes, which is why I am awake at stupid hour because fox is tonight prowling around my geese. Not that a fox won't grab a small dog if the opportunity presents).

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interesting your observation of foxes, my neighbours chihuahua guarded their chooks from the neighbourhood foxes for over 14 years and they were terrified of her. She has only died of old age at 17 and very much missed by the chooks as well as us. Now the chooks can no long be let out to forage as the foxes are waiting, here they hunt by day and night they are so brazen.

 

 we have some very big foxes, one is as tall as a cattledog, their den in the creek has 7 entrances there are so many of them.

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2 hours ago, asal said:

we have some very big foxes, one is as tall as a cattledog, their den in the creek has 7 entrances there are so many of them.

Npw that is scary !!!

yes//here comes the narrative  ;) 

many years ago , when Mum & i were much fitter , and we had dozens of guinea fowl , they were spokked by an owl one night . :(
being free range, sleeping in trees, they just took off ..and landed in a paddock a hundred metres or so from our house. 
Mum & I grabbed torches , bags into which we would place birds..and off we went . Searching for grey/dark crouching birds , on a clay, shrubby background  by torchlight ..not terrific odds to start with . 
THEN ..... 
the foxes came . 
they could  find the guineas , and we listened , as one after another, our guineas were picked off  :cry: .
At one stage , we stood together, and shone our torches around us in a circle ... y'know the old westerns /scary movies ? Firelight , scared humans, wolf/coyote eyes  in a circle?
YEP. I shall never forget it .We were totally safe of course ...but every primal instinct was saying otherwise !!! LOL 
Anyhow ..yes, we lost around half of the guineas who flew off, rescued some, and a few found their way home safely ... A night to remember ,
Now, did I tell you the one about  the fox & the  road ? ........ 
jus'jokin'  
:) 

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1 hour ago, persephone said:

 ....safe of course ...but every primal instinct was saying otherwise ....

I so relate.  Self talk "Don't be silly, nothing here to worry about" can be powerless against primordial fear of the night and the wild.  For anyone who has never had a panic attack, being alone in the middle of a forty acre paddock, freezing cold and howling wind, 2 o'clock in the morning pitch dark, and the torch battery fails can trigger it.  That's fun.  Total sympathy with the Babes in the Wood, Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel.

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On rabies, back in the day I worked in quite a few rabies countries.  Never heard of a cat catching it.  Monkeys are carriers, and baboons and other monkeys are the main food of leopards, so they have been eating rabies carriers from pre-history - maybe they have an immunity, or maybe it can only transmit through saliva from a bite into the bloodstream.  (Yet horses can catch a closely related bat-transmitted virus from just access to bat-poo under fruit trees and transmit it to people). 

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9 hours ago, PossumCorner said:

On rabies, back in the day I worked in quite a few rabies countries.  Never heard of a cat catching it.  Monkeys are carriers, and baboons and other monkeys are the main food of leopards, so they have been eating rabies carriers from pre-history - maybe they have an immunity, or maybe it can only transmit through saliva from a bite into the bloodstream.  (Yet horses can catch a closely related bat-transmitted virus from just access to bat-poo under fruit trees and transmit it to people). 

A actually they are still guessing the mode of transport of hendra from the bats

 

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