Thursday, August 17, 2017

Feed Me Like a Feral Dog


Scientists report that -- surprise -- most feral or "wild" dogs are actually eating quite a lot of garbage.

And that's not only true with Alabama feral dogs, but also for Southern European wolves which turn to garbage, small vertebrates, invertebrates, vegetables, and carcasses in the absence of larger prey such as moose, deer, wild boar, and domestic farm stock.

And what do zoo keepers feed their wolves?  Purina or any other commercial bagged kibble dog food.

Wolf biologist David Mech notes that grass appears in 14-43% of all wolf scat found in North America and Eurasia. Plant material in fox and coyote scat, including grass, is so common as to be unremarkable.

Leopards, jaguars, mountain lions, and bobcats also eat surprising amounts of grass. A sample of 215 leopard scats collected in the Tai National Forest of the Ivory Coast, for example, found 17% had a considerable amount of grassy vegetable matter.

1 comment:

dp said...

Is that news?