Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 September 2026 | 18(9): 29781–29783

 

ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) 

https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.10109.18.9.29781-29783

#10109 | Received 23 August 2025 | Final received 07 August 2026| Finally accepted 31 August 2026

 

 

Small Wild Cats Special Series

Striped Hyena Hyaena hyaena (Linnaeus, 1758) carrying a carcass of a Rusty-spotted Cat Prionailurus rubiginosus (I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1831) in Rajasthan, India

 

Akshay Jain 1 , Debashish Panda 2  , Rajasekar Rajaraman 3  , Sanjeev Sharma 4 , Sugna Ram Jat 5  & Kamlesh K. Maurya 6 

 

1,2,3,6 WWF-India, 172 B, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi 110003, India.

4,5 Ramgarh-Vishdhari Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan Forest Department, Jaipur, Rajasthan 302004, India.  

1 ajain@wwfindia.net, 2 pandadebashish15@gmail.com (corresponding author), 3 rrajasekar@wwfindia.net,

4 sanjeevsharmaswm@gmail.com, 5 iamsugna@gmail.com, 6 kmaurya@wwfindia.net

 

 

Editor: Angie Appel, Wild Cat Network, Germany.       Date of publication: 26 September 2026 (online & print)

 

Citation: Jain, A., D. Panda, R. Rajaraman, S. Sharma, S.R. Jat & K.K. Maurya (2026). Striped Hyena Hyaena hyaena (Linnaeus, 1758) carrying a carcass of a Rusty-spotted Cat Prionailurus rubiginosus (I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1831) in Rajasthan, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 18(9): 29781–29783. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.10109.18.9.29781-29783    

  

Copyright: © Jain et al. 2026. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.

 

Funding: WWF-India provided funding for this study.

 

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

 

Acknowledgements: We thank personnel of the Rajasthan Forest Department for granting permission and forest officials of Ramgarh Vishdhari Tiger Reserve for logistical support.

 

 

From April to May 2024, we conducted a camera trapping survey in the Indergarh Range of Ramgarh Vishdhari Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan (Image 1). This survey yielded two photographs of a Striped Hyena Hyaena hyaena carrying a carcass of a Rusty-spotted Cat Prionailurus rubiginosus at an elevation of 358 m (Images 2 & 3).

Ramgarh Vishdhari Tiger Reserve harbours tropical dry deciduous forest, with dominant tree species including Acacia catechu, Anogeissus pendula, Butea monosperma, Lannea coromendelica (Champion & Seth 1968; Prasad 2014). Our study area in the reserve’s buffer zone encompassed about 200 km2 (Jain et al. 2025). We deployed camera traps at 55 locations in pairs positioned opposite each other to record both flanks of mammals. We considered each pair as a single sampling location.

During our total sampling effort of 1,696 camera trap days, the Striped Hyena was recorded at 23 locations (42% of all) and the Rusty-spotted Cat at eight locations (15%). The camera traps also photographed the Leopard Panthera pardus, Jungle Cat Felis chaus, Afro-Asiatic Wildcat F. lybica, Golden Jackal Canis aureus, Bengal Fox Vulpes bengalensis, Sloth Bear Melursus ursinus, Small Indian Civet Viverricula indica, and Honey Badger Mellivora capensis (Jain et al. 2025).

The Striped Hyena was also photographed carrying carcass remains of an Indian Peafowl Pavo cristatus and a Chital Axis axis. The Chital carcass was identified based on the white spots on the golden-rufous body (Menon 2023). However, none of the photographs show a killing event. This corroborates the notion that the Striped Hyena is a facultative scavenger of carrion (Alam & Khan 2015; Bhandari et al. 2020; Panda et al. 2023a,b; Mwebi et al. 2024). Possible explanations for the dead cat are that it died due to a natural cause or was killed and abandoned by other carnivores. It may also have been a roadkill (Nayak et al. 2017).

Our record contributes to the understanding of the opportunistic feeding behaviour of the Striped Hyena and complements the limited documentation of interaction between carnivores.

 

For images - - click here for full PDF

 

References

 

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Bhandari, S. et al. (2020). The diet of the Striped Hyena in Nepal’s lowland regions. Ecology and Evolution 10(15): 7953–7962. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6223

Champion, H.G. & S.K. Seth (1968). A Revised Survey of the Forest Types of India. Government of India Press, New Delhi, India, 404 pp.

Jain, A. et al. (2025). Status of carnivores and other terrestrial mammals in Indergarh buffer of Ramgarh Vishdhari Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan. WWF-India, 76 pp.

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