Food habits of the grassland wolf in Inner Mongolia of China

Abstract

In this paper, food habits of the wolf (Canis lupus) was determined in Inner Mongolia, using scat analysis Results indicated that ungulates were the staple food items (frequency 53.8%, relative biomass 85.2%). In the scats, animals was 40.3% by the frequency of occurrence, and 75.7% by the relative biomass. Compared with the food habits of wolves in Heilongjiang Province, wolves showed a different pattern in prey selection in this region. In this study, we estimated the relative biomass of food items, and amount of each prey ingested by a wolf, based on a linear regression equation,y=2.76+0.02x (r=0.997), which was obtained in the feeding trials. It is suggested that wolves are opportunistic predator. Some suggestions for wolf conservation and management were discussed.

Keywords

Wolf / Canis lupus / Food habits / Prey selection

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