Research overview: stray dogs as an anthropogenic prey subsidy for urban leopards

In and around many South Asian cities, free-ranging and stray dogs constitute a major prey base that sustains leopards at densities unattainable on wild prey alone. This overview synthesises diet and density research, especially from Mumbai and rural Maharashtra, showing how the abundance of unmanaged dogs, itself a product of human waste, functions as a food subsidy supporting big cats. It examines the dual implications: high leopard densities and associated conflict on one hand, and potential public-health benefits from dog-population control on the other. The synthesis frames the dog subsidy as a keystone link in urban-adjacent leopard ecology in India.