On December 23, in Hunchun City, Yanbian, Jilin Province, dam workers found the remains of a Northeast Leopard (Far East Leopard) whose hind legs and buttocks were eaten. Most of Hunchun City is within the scope of the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park, and the outside is the Russian Leopard National Park. The biggest "suspect" in this case is the Northeast Tiger.
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Tiger and leopard fight for the front
People often say that peers are enemies and both are top predators. What is the relationship between tigers and leopards in nature?
There are two kinds of big cat habitats in the world: tiger and leopard, which can be divided into three parts according to geographical location, namely Northeast Asia (northeast China and Russian), South Asia (including Indian and Nepalese countries) and Southeast Asia (including Thailand and Malaysian countries). In 2022, Dr. Li Zhilin from the School of Life Sciences of Tianjin Normal University, Professor Wang Tianming from the School of Life Sciences of Beijing Normal University and the National Field Science Observation and Research Station of Butch and Leopard Biodiversity in Northeast China of Beijing Normal University published a paper in Biodiversity, combing the coexistence of butch and leopard in these three regions.
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Siberian tiger, photographed in Lazo ?Royle Safaris/inaturalist, Russia.
Li Zhilin and his colleagues made a survey in the northern foot of Changbai Mountain Range, and found that tigers directly interfered with the life of leopards, but speculated that they might compete for food and other resources. It is rare for a tiger to directly kill a leopard in Northeast Asia. The density of Siberian tigers in China is too small (0.24~0.30 /100 square kilometers) to directly repel leopards.
However, in tropical areas where the density of tigers and leopards is higher, the risk of friction between them becomes greater. There are records of tigers killing leopards in Huikha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand and Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in India.
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In 2021, a female tiger in Shariska Nature Reserve was photographed with a baby leopard, ?Yashvardhan Singh Shekhawat.
Li Zhilin mentioned that tigers and leopards are prone to conflict over food. In May this year, a dead leopard was found in the Bor Tiger Reserve in India, and a partially eaten water deer 50 meters away. This unlucky leopard may be the victim of competing with tigers for prey.
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Tiger ?SWE-Yaatrik/Wikimedia in Mu Dumara Tiger Reserve
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Leopard ?Prabukumar84/Wikimedia in Mu Dumara Tiger Reserve
There are more indirect forms of evidence that tigers "bully" leopards. In Chitwan National Park in Nepal, the tiger occupied a "good place" with less human activities and more prey in the center of the park, while the leopard could only retreat to the area with more people and less prey outside the park, and its habitat was like a steamed stuffed bun. The tiger dug up the stuffing and ate it, and the leopard could only eat the remaining skin.
In Sariska Tiger Reserve, India, the tiger was once extinct, but it was reintroduced in 2008~2010, and the pressure immediately fell on the leopard. After the arrival of the tiger, the density of leopards decreased from 7.6 0.6 per 100 square kilometers to 3.1 0.4 per 100 square kilometers.
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Tiger navnirvana/wikimedia in Shariska reserve
In South Asia and Southeast Asia, a smaller predator, jackals, will also get involved in the tiger and leopard competition. If the food is rich enough, tigers, leopards and jackals can choose their own prey of different sizes to reduce friction and achieve coexistence.
In areas where food is relatively scarce, such as Kuiburi National Park in Thailand, tigers occupy the best plots, and jackals are driven to barren plots by tigers, where jackals will put pressure on leopards, so that leopards can’t stay in barren places and hide in peace, so they can only venture to live in tiger’s territory. It’s a rat in a bellows who suffers at both ends.
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Jackal and Cat League in Yunnan, China
Leopard: I can’t afford to hide.
Although the leopard can’t avoid suffering indignities, it also has skills that tigers can’t learn. Robert D. Holt and Gary A. Polis believe that although the tiger overwhelms the leopard when it interferes head-on, the leopard uses its prey more efficiently, and both have their own strengths, forming a stable coexistence situation.
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This year, Indian forestry officials photographed a tiger killing a leopard ?Parveen Kaswan in Ranthambhore National Park.
Predators strive for energy balance. If the prey is too small, the meat obtained by catching it is not worth the effort, so it is not worth eating. Buddhism says that "the lion fights the rabbit with all its strength". In fact, according to Matt W. Hayward and Graham I. H. Kerley’s investigation on the lion’s prey preference, the rabbit is not on the lion’s prey list at all.
However, for smaller leopards, such a small prey as rabbits is still worth a taste. The infrared camera of Cat League photographed Huabei leopard with rabbits and squirrels in Shanxi. Both tigers and leopards like to prey on large carnivorous animals, but leopards can choose small prey that tigers "despise" to increase the width of their feeding niche, thus reducing competition.
Leopard F7 is holding a small rabbit cat alliance.
"Not to be taunted, but to be able to hide" is also a way. Research by Li Zhilin and others in Changbai Mountain found that leopards do not avoid plots where tigers appear, but appear more frequently, perhaps because they are attracted by prey (especially sika deer).
At the same time, leopards will use some "tricks" to avoid tigers, such as moving more during the day and staggering with nocturnal tigers. Another way is to use the terrain. Leopard often appears on the mountain ridge path, while tiger often appears near the forest road in the valley.
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Leopard ?Prabukumar84/Wikimedia in Mu Dumara Tiger Reserve
In Huikaken Wildlife Sanctuary, leopards also tend to lurk at night and come out by day. Large prey such as wild boar and water deer that tigers like are mostly active at night and in the morning, while small prey such as red muntjac that leopards like are mostly active during the day. The leopards may go to the "day shift" to avoid tigers, or they may go to the "day shift" to chase red muntjac. No matter what kind, the tiger’s influence can’t be ruled out. The tiger’s competition will prompt the leopard to choose small prey, perhaps because the tiger has seized the big animals, and the leopard has no choice but to go to the "day shift" to catch the red muntjac.
More powerful behind the scenes
Behind the tit-for-tat tigers and leopards, there is a more powerful species-human beings, which puts more pressure on them.
Generally speaking, large carnivores are sensitive to human influence, but leopards are more adaptable to humans than tigers. The South China tiger was extinct in the wild, but the North China leopard persisted today. In Mumbai, leopards often appear in residential areas, hunting wild boar and dogs attracted by human garbage. As mentioned earlier, the leopards in Chiwang National Park are pushed out to the marginal areas by tigers. There are many human activities here, and the tigers can’t adapt, but they have become "shelters" for leopards.
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White-spotted deer in Chiwang National Park, where there are not many prey, leads to competition between tigers and leopards. Tigers drive leopards out of the core area with the most food, but it is not so small that the number of tigers and leopards is seriously reduced.
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A tiger holds a leopard’s leg ?FLPA/Chris Brunskill in Rentembor National Park.
Human grazing and hunting are inevitable even in the nature reserve, which makes the number of large herbivores decrease day by day, and the lack of food will intensify the competition between tigers and leopards. In Que Li Wu National Park, the number of large ungulates is insufficient, so leopards can only increase their prey on small animals such as pigs, badgers and civet cats to avoid direct competition with tigers.
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White-limbed bison and tigers in KuiLi Wu National Park like to prey on large animals ?tontantravel/Flickr.
Li Zhilin and others found that in the northern foot of Changbai Mountain, tigers and leopards rarely appeared in places where livestock appeared frequently. The grazing of cattle has greatly reduced the shrubs and herbs in the lower forest, which may cause serious survival pressure on herbivores, especially sika deer (the main prey of tigers and leopards), thus limiting the population growth of Northeast tigers and Far East leopards.
When the human influence is more serious, both will go extinct. For example, in the Nam et-phoulouy National Protected Area in Laos, habitat degradation and poaching are very serious, and there are no leopards or tigers here.
Leopard F7 is holding a little squirrel cat alliance.
"The tiger and the leopard fought!" The paragraph that looks like a marketing number actually contains ecological truth. The balance of nature is dynamic, and creatures have been competing and killing each other. The work of protecting species should not only consider the destruction of human beings, but also consider the relationship between organisms. In 2012, Australia introduced the endangered species Tasmanian devil to Maria Island. As a result, Tasmanian devil ate about 3,000 pairs of little blue penguins.
Nowadays, both tigers and leopards are seriously threatened by habitat shrinkage and fragmentation. The distribution range of leopards has been reduced to only 25%~37% of the historical distribution area, and the distribution range of tigers is only 7%. How long can they coexist peacefully in the only remaining habitat?
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Far East Leopard, shot at Khasanskiy александрчегодаев/Inaturalist in Russia.
references
[1] Li Z, Wang T, Smith J L D, et al. Coexistence of two sympatric flagship carnivores in the human-dominated forest landscapes of Northeast Asia[J]. Landscape Ecology, 2019, 34: 291-305.
Li Zhilin, Wang Tianming. Overview of the competition and coexistence of tigers and leopards in Asia [J]. Biodiversity, 2022, 30(9): 22271.
Plan and make
Original title: "The first time in China! The Northeast Tiger actually "hunted" the Northeast Leopard. What happened? 》
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