The Range of Prey Size of the Royal Bengal Tiger of Sundarbans

Table 1

Frequency of occurrence, estimated biomass consumed, and estimated numbers of individuals consumed by tigers in STR, based on the contents of scats collected from 1999 to 2001 (𝑛=113).

Prey base	No. of occurrence in scats 𝑁(occur)	Frequency of occurrence (A)	Percent occurrence	Mean body mass/weight of prey base (B)	Correction factor (kg/scat) (C)	Relative biomass consumed (%) (D)	Relative no. of individual consumed (%) (E)
Spotted deer	78	69.02	53.79	50 kg	3.73	63.16	13.62
Wild Boar	28	24.77	19.31	45 kg	3.55	21.57	5.29
Rhesus monkey	10	8.84	6.89	8 kg	2.26	4.9	6.70
Water monitor	14	12.38	9.65	8 kg	2.26	6.85	9.20
Fishing cat	1	0.88	0.68	20 kg	2.68	0.05	0.0002
Fish	6	5.30	4.13	2.5 kg	Not corrected	1.30	7.02
Crab	7	6.19	4.82	0.2 kg	Not corrected	1.08	5.37
Turtle	1	0.88	0.68	15 kg	2.50	0.05	0.0003
Phoenix paludosa	14	12.38
Total	159

(i) Frequency of occurrence (proportion of total scats in which an item was found).
Frequency of occurrence = 𝑁_𝑖×100/𝑁_(occur).
(ii) Percent of occurrence (number of times in which a specific item was found as a percentage of all food items found barring Phoenix which is not considered as a conventional food item but is consumed by the tiger to regulate bowel movements).
Percent occurrence = 𝑁𝑖×100/𝑁_(occur.)−𝑁_{(𝑃ℎ𝑜𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑥occur)}.
(𝑁_𝑖 stands for number of times each species is found to occur in the scat samples).