In our last two articles, we described how to identify if your livestock has been killed by a carnivore and what bite marks can indicate what carnivores may have killed your livestock. Knowing what carnivore is responsible for attacks on your farm is crucial to building effective solutions to human-wildlife conflict and to protecting your livestock for future productivity.
Each carnivore species hunts in different ways and each has its preference for what part of the animal it eats, including whether it eats the intestines, leaves them untouched or removes them intact. By looking at what meat, intestines and bones have been eaten, we can identify what species was likely the culprit. Although every animal is different, these characteristic feeding patterns associated with the different carnivores that live in Botswana, can help us identify what carnivore may be responsible for attacks on your farm. Some species, such as wild dogs, hyenas and lions, can leave very little to analyse, but in most cases, enough carcass will remain behind on which to search for clues. It is important to remember to be vigilant on your farm and investigate missing livestock as soon as possible. Vultures for example, are your best police force on the farm – showing where carcasses may be so you can investigate quickly. The quicker you can get to a carcass, the less disturbance there will be from scavengers and the more clues you will find at the site.
What meat has been eaten
The most voracious appetites in the large carnivore guild belong to spotted hyena, lion and wild dogs, who tend to eat meat from all over the animal. The smaller carnivores tend to be more selective in what sections of the body they eat. Cheetahs will prefer to take the meaty sections of the upper legs, starting on the rump and also eating the meat around the shoulders. Leopards will exhibit similar behaviours at first, but will continue eating the carcass days after it has died, consuming as much meat as they can. Jackals will also eat the upper legs, but also around the stomach and brown hyenas will also focus on the upper legs but will also eat the meat on the head of the animal. Domestic dogs will eat the whole length of the legs, including the lower legs and will also eat the meat on the head of the animal.
What has happened to the intestines?
Some species, like caracal will leave the intestines and stomach completely intact, whereas other species, like cheetahs and leopards, will leave them intact but will conspicuously remove them from the carcass and leave them nearby. Domestic dogs, jackals and hyenas will partially eat the intestines and lions and wild dogs will sometimes eat the offal as well.
Clues in the bones
Smaller carnivores do not have the bite strength to chew through large bones, so they tend to either leave all the bones untouched, as is the case with caracals, or chew the smaller bones like the rib ends only (jackals, cheetahs and leopards tend to do this). Brown and spotted hyenas have the strongest jaws of all mammals and tend to crush bones like the skulls and eat them, leaving only the largest bones, if any. Lions and wild dogs will also only leave the largest bones behind.
Looking at these clues should help you accurately identify what carnivore may have been eating your livestock. But remember to check the bruising under the bite marks to confirm that the carnivore actually killedthe livestock and was not just scavenging on it after it died of other causes. Just because it’s eating your livestock, doesn’t mean that it was necessarily responsible for its death.
When analysing a carcass, remember – the more evidence you can gather, the more accurate your conclusion about what has happened to your livestock and the better the strategy to prevent further loss will be. Stay tuned next month when we discuss what other causes of death are often attributed to carnivores, like disease, snakebite and the dreaded two-legged carnivores.
For more information about correct identification of livestock carcasses, visit www.cheetahconservationbotswana.org/information-for-farmers.html
Caption: The sooner you get to the carcass the more evidence will remain. If a carcass is this old, there may be very few clues left to identify the culprit.
