Way of the Dhole

Chapter 5: Interactions With Other Predators

Wherever dholes live, they have to share their food and habitat with two other large mammalian predators: tigers and leopards. 

Dholes, tigers, and leopards do have a large dietary overlap with each other, so co-existing with each other can be tricky. However, all three predators have figured out ways to co-exist with each other without one out-competing the other.  And the ability to coexist is facilitated by the fragile and intricate balance between both conspecific and intraspecific competition and prey availability. 

Tigers and leopards are ambush hunters and they prefer hunting between dusk and dawn. Dholes, on the other hand, prefer hunting during the day, making them diurnal hunters. Dholes manage to avoid the big cats by hunting during the time periods the big cats are the least active in the places they don't use as much. However, the avoidance strategy dholes use depends on the availability of prey. In areas where prey animals are very available, they share the same space with the big cats but segregate from them by being active at different times, but in areas where prey animals are at low densities they overlap with them in time use but they segregate from tigers in space use. 

Even though they all hunt the same animals, (sambar, chital deer, wild boar, and gaur) they hunt slightly different prey animals. In one study, tigers preferred hunting animals that weigh over 176 kg (388 pounds) since those animals, while they aren't as abundant as smaller animals, give tigers more energy when they feed on them. Leopards and dholes preferred hunting animals that are 30-175 kg. But the preferred prey weight range of dholes as a whole is either 40-60 kg (88-132 pounds) or 130 kg-190 kg (286-419 pounds). In another study, tigers preferred animals over 100 kg (220 pounds) while dholes and leopards preferred animals 50 kg (110 pounds) or less. In short, dholes and leopards prefer hunting smaller animals than tigers do. 

Despite being able to coexist, this doesn't mean conflict never happens between these animals.  

Dholes have been known to chase leopards off of carcasses and will even harass leopards and chase them up trees whenever possible. This may seem like they're being mean, but there is a good reason for them to do this. A leopard is no match for a pack of dholes, but leopards will attack and kill lone dholes if they can, and so it's believed dholes harass leopards to try making them think twice before attacking a packmate that gets separated. 

(Photo Credit goes to Surya Ramachandran) 

Tigers, on the other hand, are a different story. Unlike leopards, tigers are dominant over dholes and will kill and sometimes eat dholes when they can to eliminate competition for prey. A recent study in India compared two reserves in central India and then did a distribution-wide assessment. The results were that dhole packs are smaller in areas with higher tiger populations and that the effects tigers have on dhole pack sizes is greater than the effect prey availability has. The reason for this is that tigers suppress dhole pack sizes by killing dholes and stealing their kills. 

(Photo Credit goes to Jignesh Patel) 

The authors of the paper believe tiger predation might affect dhole packs in three different ways. When a tiger kills an adult that isn't one of the breeding pair, it leads to less successful hunts and it makes it harder for the pack to care for the pups. If a tiger were to kill an entire litter of pups, obviously it would cause lower recruitment rates and killing one of the breeding pair would reduce reproductive rates. Since the breeding pair are at the top of the hierarchy, one of them being killed by a tiger may cause the pack to destabilize. 

Tigers stealing kills from dholes helps suppress pack sizes because it leads to dholes hunting smaller animals since they can eat smaller carcasses more quickly and they can devour a greater amount of smaller carcasses before a tiger shows up to steal it. 

(Photo Credit goes to Vikram Hiresavi) 

There is one story that should also be mentioned. In the late 1990s, the Wild Dog Foundation gave some money to the Dhole Conservation Project that was led by Dr. Leon Durbin and the project took place in Kanha National Park, India. The goal was to learn about their behavior, ecology, and role in the ecosystem. 

The project, however, didn't even last a year because two packs were fitted with radio collars and one of the packs was killed by poisoning. The other pack was also killed by poisoning, even though there was no evidence they posed a threat to livestock. This caused the project to be canceled. It was found that the pack ventured out of the park to avoid the tigers living in it. 

(Photo Credit goes to Sachin Sharma)

Dholes and Indian wolves co-occur in some regions despite having different habitat preferences. Dholes prefer more closed environments such as forests while wolves prefer more open habitats like grasslands. However, on two occasions lone wolves have been seen associating with dhole packs without much agnostic behavior towards each other. The reasons for these associations happening could be due to advantages in foraging or perhaps more likely anti-predator advantages by making the lone wolves harder for big cats to sneak up on with more eyes and ears with them via the dholes. These individual wolves might also be dispersing without other wolves around and happened to find it advantageous to hang around dholes.   

(Photo credit goes to Saroj Panda)

And then, of course, they also have to deal with the deadliest predator of all: humans.