Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 October 2024 | 16(10): 26027–26029

 

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

https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.9347.16.10.26027-26029

#9347 | Received 02 August 2024 | Final received 16 September 2024 | Finally accepted 22 October 2024

 

 

First sighting record of a Ruddy Mongoose Urva smithii Gray, 1837 feeding on a pipistrelle bat in Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, India

 

Chikkanaragund Harshakumar 1, Rajesh Puttaswamaiah 2  & K.S. Chetan Nag 3

 

1 Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, Forest Campus, Hunsur, Karnataka 571105, India.

2 Bat Conservation India Trust (BCIT) #285, 10th Cross, Rashi Residency Layout, Kadabagere, Magadi Road, Bengaluru, Karnataka 562130, India.

3 Centre for Urban Ecology, Bio-Diversity, Evolution and Climate Change (CUBEC), JAIN (Deemed-to-be UNIVERSITY), #319, 17th Cross, 25th Main, J P Nagar 6th Phase, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560078, India.

1 harshavcifs@gmail.com,  2 rajesh@bcit.org.in, 3 ks.chetan@jainuniversity.ac.in (corresponding author)

 

 

Editor: S.S. Talmale, Zoological Survey of India, Pune, India.      Date of publication: 26 October 2024 (online & print)

 

Citation: Harshakumar, C., R. Puttaswamaiah & K.S.C. Nag (2024). First sighting record of a Ruddy Mongoose Urva smithii Gray, 1837 feeding on a pipistrelle bat in Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 16(10): 26027–26029. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.9347.16.10.26027-26029

  

Copyright: © Harshakumar et al. 2024. 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: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

 

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

 

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the staff of the forest department of Karnataka for necessary cooperation. Special thanks to Amith S J who helped us with drawing the maps of the study. We also like to thank the reviewers for their constructive comments on the manuscript.

 

 

Abstract: Bats are predated regularly by mammals like cats, birds, and snakes. However, bats are rarely observed to be predated by mongooses. Herein we document and describe a Ruddy Mongoose opportunistically predating on a pipistrelle bat at its roosting site inside a tree crevice at Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, Karnataka in December 2022. Our observation may indicate that the Ruddy Mongoose Urva smithii could be an opportunistic but not a selective hunter of bats.

 

Keywords: Feeding behaviour, herpestid, meso-carnivore, predator, prey consumption, tropical moist deciduous forest.

 

 

Exploring the diets of predators is crucial to understanding their life-history strategies since the survival of a predator is dependent upon the quality and quantity of its diet (Miquelle et al. 1996). Foraging habits of mammals thus become an imperative criterion to explore any ecosystem and is a crucial theme in ecology and population biology research.

Mongooses are carnivorous mammals that play important roles in the ecology of a community by consuming a range of prey species including both invertebrates and vertebrates like amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals (Seaman & Randall 1962; Kamath & Seshadri 2019). Feldliamer et al. (1999) have documented mongooses feeding on vegetable matter in the form of tubers, fruits, and berries too.

Of the seven Indian mongoose species, belonging to the subfamily Herpestinae and family Herpestidae, Ruddy Mongoose Urva smithii, distributed in India and Sri Lanka. It  is a forested species distinguished from the Indian Grey Mongoose by its tad larger size and jet black-tipped tail (Mudappa & Choudhury 2016). They are considered to be ‘Least Concern’ according to the IUCN Red List category and have been documented in forested areas of Nepal (Subba et al. 2014) in recent years. To the best of our knowledge, information on Ruddy Mongoose’s feeding behaviour is almost nil or scanty. We herein for the first time report these mongooses feeding on bats at the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve (Rajiv Gandhi National Park).

 

Methods

We exhaustively searched all relevant information on the predation of bats by mongooses employing Google Scholar and Science Direct search engines. Predation was defined as the consumption of one organism (the prey) by another organism (the predator), in which the prey is alive when the predator first attacks it (Begon et al. 2005). Thus, we used only records that gave us details on capture and subsequent prey consumption. We did not account for studies where the prey was not successfully caught or when caught it was not consumed by the predator. The study followed the search process criteria of PRISMA 2020 updated guideline (Page et al. 2021). Geographical coordinates and elevation of the location were recorded using a Garmin etrex10 global positioning system (GPS) handheld unit.

Nagarahole Tiger Reserve is a part of Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve receiving about 1,000 –1,540 mm annual rainfall with temperatures ranging 12–32 0C and elevation ranging 687–960 m with a total geographical area of the reserve is 843.96 km2 located in the Kodagu and Mysore districts of Karnataka, India (Rashmitha et al. 2024). This protected area supports tropical moist deciduous forests (Habib et al. 2020).

 

The event

A Ruddy Mongoose was photographed by the first author at Sunkadakatte, Nagarahole Tiger Reserve (11.582 N, 76.127 E) on 25 December 2022 between 1200 and 1300 h at an elevation of 746 m. A solitary male Ruddy Mongoose ~30 m away from the first author was seen climbing an eight-foot dead Terminalia anogeissiana (locally known as ‘Dindiga Mara’) tree and inserted its pointed snout and one-fourth of its frontal body into tree hole to catch the pipistrelle individual. The bat species assessment was based on two factors, viz., size proportional to the mouth of the mongoose and the pelage colour of the body. The mongoose after catching the pipistrelle came out and foraged the individual for about 10 minutes (Image 1). Once consumed, the agile mongoose speedily climbed down the tree and vanished into a grassy bush nearby. An attempt to find and identify remains of prey species around the tree went in vain 15 minutes after the mongoose disappeared from the predation spot.

There have been several anecdotal observations of Ruddy Mongoose individuals (at least two) around the aforementioned site. In fact, the first author has often sighted two Ruddy Mongoose individuals around the same habitat and one feeding on a Jungle Owlet Glaucidium radiatum (Image 2) a couple of months post this event. To the best of our knowledge, scientific documentation of Ruddy Mongoose feeding on bats is perhaps the first of its kind. Interestingly, Mallick et al. (2021) have reported Indian Grey Mongoose Herpestes edwardsii, attacking an Indian Flying Fox Pteropus medius colony and snatching away an individual from a colony in & around Ajodhya hill area of Purulia, West Bengal, India. In fact, pipistrelle bats are known to be predated by feral cats (Corbett et al. 2003), Black Rats (Pryde et al. 2005), Wolf Snake, Kestrels, Yellow Ants, and giant centipede (James 2005) but none by a mongoose so far. In conclusion, Ruddy Mongoose being strategic hunters could be consuming a variety of food items including bats in this vicinity which needs to be thoroughly investigated and documented. We herein strongly advocate an assessment of resource disposal and allocation and other similar environmental parameters for a superior comprehension of the habitats of this rarely documented forest meso-carnivore.

 

 

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