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Navaneethan, B.; Sankar, K.; Manjrekar, M.; Qureshi, Q.
Food habits of tiger (_Panthera tigris tigris_) as shown by scat analysis in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, Central India
2019  Asian Journal of Conservation Biology (8): 224-227

Tiger (_Panthera tigris_) is a large terrestrial carnivore found in diverse habitat types showing remarkable toler-ance to variation in altitude, temperature and rainfall (Schaller, 1967; Sanquist _et al., _1999). Being an umbrella species, its effective conservation enhances survival prospects for other forms of biodiversity (Karanth, 2003). In carnivores, the life history strategies largely depend on several factors like food, spacing pattern, habitat selection, distribution and movement pattern (Bekoff _et al., _1984; Sunquist & Sunquist, 1989) and among them, food is a vital resource for carnivores (Jedrezejewski _et al., _1989). Carnivores, especially tigers are morphologically specialized to kill large bodied prey species (Schaller, 1967). Especially tigers prey upon large to medium bodied ungulates in all the ecosystems in which they occur (Seidensticker, 1997; Karanth, 2003). They can potentially hunt prey varying from small mammals to the largest of the bovids (Biswas & Sankar, 2002). Although tigers do kill smaller prey, ranging from peafowl to prawns, they cannot survive and reproduce if a habitat does not support adequate densities of ungulates (Sunquist & Sunquist, 1989). Food habits are of basic importance when trying to understand the ecology and natural history of carnivores (Miquelle _et al., _1996). Studies on tiger prey selection have been scarce in tropical forests (Schaller, 1967; Griffiths, 1975; Johnsingh, 1983; Rabinowitz & Nottingham, 1986; Emmons, 1987; Rabinowitz 1989, Biswas & Sankar 2002; Ramesh _et al., _2009; Majumder _et al., _2012).

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