Southeast Asia's big cats like their prey rare — as in really elusive
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Loading... - Qian Huang
- 06 Sep 2022
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Tigers and clouded leopards are two of Southeast Asia’s most threatened and enigmatic big cat species. With the numbers of both in sharp decline across the region, leaving their remaining populations small and fragmented, it’s unsurprising that scientists know very little about basic things — such as what they eat.
But now, a new study that analyzed scat samples collected in a remote protected area in northern Laos provides new insights into their dietary preferences. As expected, wild pigs feature prominently on the menu for both tigers (Panthera tigris) and mainland clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa). However, both species appear to deliberately seek out a mysterious, goat-like ungulate called the serow (Capricornis sumatraensis) over all other prey, according to the findings published in Ecology and Evolution.
The researchers say their study can help direct conservationists toward the most suitable prey species to target for recovery in their efforts to boost flagging big cat numbers across the region.
“Management and enhancement of serow populations, along with other ungulate species, is likely to be important for the clouded leopard to persist and for tiger population recovery in some areas of Southeast Asia,” Akchousanh Rasphone, Laos conservation science director at the Wildlife Conservation Society and lead author of the study, told Mongabay. Read More...
