Keywords
Digestibility
Feeding Trails
Linear Regression.
How to Cite
Abstract
The Indian Fox Vulpes bengalensis is an omnivorous canid and has been reported to feed on a wide range of food items. However, the correction factor for assessing food intake from prey occurrence in scats has not been evaluated. We determined the relationship between food intake and the number of field-collectible scats produced in three captive foxes. A total of 14 feeding trails were conducted with food items ranging from <2 gm (insects) to ∼2,000 gm (rabbits and some body parts ofgoats). Foxes ate on an average of 178.24Mean ± 29.55SE gm of food and produced 10.23Mean ± 1.39 SE collectible scats/individual/day during feeding trial experiments. The percentage of non-collectible scats ranged from 2.98% to 12.22%, and averaged 7.14% (0.77 SE) of total scats produced. Digestibility index was lowest for smaller prey items. The prey biomass eaten per collectible scat (Y) increased as the live body weight of prey (X) increased (Y= 0.013 (SE 0.002) × prey weight (gm) + 6.76 (SE 2.25), R2 = 0.78, F (1, 11) = 39.43, P = 0.0001), which can be used to compute biomass consumption from scat data.References
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