On the Ecological Separation between Tigers and Leopards

Abstract

In the Royal Chitawan National Park, Nepal, the tiger (Panthera tigris) and the leopard (Panthera pardzs) coexist in the riverine forest/tall grass vegetation types. These two big cats differ in the size of prey killed, use of vegetation types, and in activity periods. Although the tiger's weight is four times that of the leopard, coexistence is reportedly not the general rule. A comparison of the results from Chitawan with Kanha National Park (India), where resident tigers occur but leopards are only transients, and Wilpattu National Park (Sri Lanka), where there are leopards but no tigers, indicates that coexistence in Chitawan is facilitated by a large prey biomass, a larger proportion of the ungulate biomass in the small size classes, and by the dense vegetation structure. Some consequences of predator size and the role of interspecific dominance are discussed. THE Pmathera RADIATION was mainly accomplished by minor morphological changes which included changes in body size. These big or so-called roaring cats are the predators of large mammals, primarily ungulates. They are specialized for capture through stealth and for killing, alone in dense cover, prey which are frequently as large as or larger than themselves. In the lion, P. leo, the only social felid, hunting efficiency is increased thrrough cooperative stalks, an adaptive response to open savanna conditions (Schaller 1972, Kleiman and Eisenberg.