I don’t know where this myth came from, but it seems that anyone who has heard of dholes thinks they are super predators that swarm in vast hordes and kill everything, including wolves, bears, leopards, and tigers.
Keep in mind that dholes aren’t much larger than the typical border collie, and although they form larger packs than wolves, one of the probable reasons why they do so is to have more eyes, ears, and noses around to detect stalking big cats.
Leopards and tigers like dholes. For dinner.
This video does a fairly good job debunking the misconception that tigers have much to fear from dholes.
This video comes from a meme on youtube that has frustrated me for some time.
Whenever I look for videos on predation, I find these videos that go something like this: “Tiger Kills Lion: Tigers Rule!” or “Lions Kill Crocodile: Lions Kick Butt!”
It seems that within the vast world of youtube, some people have decided to use this technology to have fights about which animal will win in a one-to-one combat scenario.
However, now that we’ve banned virtually all forms of animal pugilism, these arguments still exist. In the old days, they’d just set up a ring and have at it.
So maybe youtube is a good place for these sentiments after all.
At least they aren’t fighting tigers and dholes!
interesting video.
dholes are beautiful!
i can just picture people sitting at home under a bare bulb at their computer arguing that a bald eagle would win a war against black bears any day. lol.
http://ia341313.us.archive.org/0/items/PocockMammalia2/pocock2.pdf
Here’s source that features this myth.
It’s from 1941, so one must be careful of treating this information as if were true.
I don’t see that this is significantly different from lions / hyenas or lions/African hunting dogs. Certainly in the video on the tiger “one or two” dholes are not going to take on a tiger any more than a pair of wolves would argue with a grizzly. However, when it is a large pack (22+) it appears that it’s a different story:
http://www.carnivoraforum.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=canine&thread=931&page=1
A check on google scholar indicates that dholes can and do kill tigers just as hyenas can and do kill lions. It certainly isn’t a regular thing — it’s safer and easier to run away. But it is apparently not the case that every tiger/dhole interface ends with the dhole on the losing end.
Peggy Richter.
it is harder for dholes to kill tigers than it is for hyenas to kill lions
hyenas beat lionesses at 4:1 and lions at 5:1 and dholes beat tigeress at 17:1 and tigers at 22:1
out of 30 dholes that attacked a tigeress 6 of them were killed before the others ripped her apart