Diet and prey profiles of three sympatric large carnivores in Bandipur

Andheria, Karanth and Kumar quantified the diets of tiger, leopard and dhole in southern India's Bandipur Tiger Reserve using scat analysis combined with prey-availability data. They documented how the three predators partition a shared ungulate community, with tigers focusing on the largest prey, leopards on smaller and medium species, and dholes on medium ungulates taken by pack hunting, while also revealing substantial overlap on abundant species such as chital. The study reinforced the role of prey body size and predator hunting strategy in enabling coexistence and provided diet baselines for a key Indian reserve. It is a useful complement to kill-based studies for understanding felid prey selection and guild structure in tropical forests.