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

Table 2

Frequency of occurrence, estimated biomass consumed, and estimated numbers of individuals consumed by tigers in STR, based on the contents of scats collected from 2008 to 2010 (𝑛=101).

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	73	72.27	52.51	50 kg	3.73	58.17	26.24
Wild Boar	43	42.57	30.93	45 kg	3.55	32.61	16.28
Rhesus monkey	10	9.9	7.19	8 kg	2.26	4.82	13.57
Water monitor	06	5.94	4.31	8 kg	2.26	2.89	8.14
Fish	04	3.96	2.87	2.5 kg	Not corrected	0.85	7.69
Bird	02	1.98	1.43	2.5 kg	Not corrected	0.42	3.84
Crab	01	0.99	0.72	0.2 kg	Not corrected	0.21	3.75
Phoenix paludosa	07	6.93
Total	146

(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 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 = 𝑁_𝑖×100/𝑁_(occur.)−𝑁_{(𝑃ℎ𝑜𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑥occur)}.
(𝑁_𝑖 stands for number of times each species is found to occur in the scat samples).