Change in feeding behavior of Indian Wild pigs at Bandipur

 Narration and photographs by Manu K

A typical family of wild pigs in Bandipur tourism area

My earliest memory of going for a safari ride in Bandipur dates back to the days when it was just declared a Tiger reserve, after the initiation of the Project tiger in the country. Those were the days when safaris were conducted in an open lorry. People were all filled upon the back and there was little arrangement for sitting. Anyway most people preferred to stand as the roads were rough and there was nobody to establish order among the crowd. A lame guard with a double barrel gun in his khakhis on board was the guide. There must have also been some sort of mini buses commuting in the forests, for a different category of people.

 

A group of wild pigs on a deer carcass

Then came the days of H C Basappanavar, the first project director in Karnataka. He brought visible changes in the attitude of the public. Education camps for teachers and students began in war footing and a different class of people started emerging among the public. Ever since, people who cared to list their sightings on a safaris had wild boar (Sus scrofa) as a serious entry. One saw them so scarcely. As days passed, they became common and were soon not a subject with special emphasis.  As though an index of success of project Tiger, certain species started thriving all over the country. Among half a dozen such species the Indian Wild pig seems to top the list. A number of factors could have contributed for their success but one cannot ignore the adaptability and resilience of these species.

 

Wild pig feasting as a scavenger

In the post millennium times you have started seeing Indian Wild pigs right in the reception area. They, along with bonnet macaque are becoming commoner and commoner as though they are greatest beneficiaries of tourism. It is just not the litter generated by the passers by but people who stay over night are also too ‘spilly’ in their eating habits. Without any centralized garbage disposing mechanism in the establishment all organic wastes of both vegetable and animal origin in the kitchen and the widely dispersed accommodations are scattered locally. In a matter of seconds the scavengers clean it up making appear a very eco friendly way of disposal. But what worries is who the scavenging animals are. Instead of jackals, crows or vultures that traditionally cleaned up the left overs but now animals like the wild pigs and the bonnet macaques have moved in. They both eat up anything disposed by humans and are now competing with one another. In order to have the best access to the human generated food they have learned to guard their territories and be very patient with the humans.

A wild pig bolting with the remains of a chittal deer

Today they are seen holding their resting places very close to one or the other guest house. They appear to be very docile and domesticated and get to the door step of the visitors. But once they feel threatened or challenged they immediately plunge-back their own evolutionary past and become wild. There are many stray instances of humans, being hurt by the pigs and monkeys as well.

Off late the wild pigs are getting into focus in the reception area. The nice green lawn spread across the residential area and the kitchen has been the roost for at least a thousand spotted deer every night. This habit of the deer seeking shelter amidst human settlement is an age old phenomenon. The ungulates seem at home in human vicinity and carry out all their natural chores like mating to breeding in this area. No doubt the predatory tigers and leopards also have this turf as their home range.

When you went out for a nature walk in the early mornings a few years ago you would find traces of deer predation in the fringes of the open area. A leopard or a tiger would have made a kill and left the half eaten remains of its quarry and gone because of day break.

Two years ago, one early morning while I was with a group of students a female pig and her five juvenile offspring dashed out of a bush with a full rib cage of a chital deer. It was just astonishing to me even though I had read about the scavenging nature of the Wild pigs and how they could be a serious threat for an inexperienced predator. In about five minutes the family decimated the entire carcass.

Today you don’t see any trace of a kill in this area. Probably the wild pigs may be even snatching the kill off from their predators in case he is young or inexperienced. 

Last fortnight it was a sunny afternoon and even as the tourists started gathering for the safari, we were sitting under a Pongamia tree for a group discussion. As usual the bonnet macaques perambulated among various groups and were dis-heartedly settling around us as none of us had anything of their curiosity. All of a sudden there was an alarm call from a bonnet macaque as though there was some large sized predator. All we could see was a khakhi rag being pulled about by three pigs. It was a young female and her two juvenile companions man-handling a juvenile bonnet macaque. The larger of the pigs was holding the macaque by one of its legs and the other two fought to get hold of any spare of the macaque.  It was a strange team-up of the pigs yet they worked in stealth.  After an initial burst towards the predators, all the macaques bolted to safety and even started urinating and defecating where ever they were. The opportunistic predators simply bolted to cover with its half dead quarry in its mouth.  Half an hour later they were seen back sniffing around without a trace of blood on their face as I had just finished explaining the children how eating and being eaten is part of nature.

 

A bonnet macaque injured by a wild pig's attack

What makes the wild pigs change their behaviour?

Scientists propose several hypotheses, which need to be tested in the future, to explain the observed unusual behaviour of the boar. Shreejata Gupta and Anindya Sinha of the Indian Institute of advanced studies who have made similar observations explain the phenomenon as follows.

The opportunistic predator hypothesis: It suggests that the prey individual was foraging away from the other troop members and thus, perhaps, increased its chances of being attacked opportunistically by the predatory boar. Although opportunistic predators are not believed this possibility cannot be easily ruled out in this particular situation.

The habitat complexity hypothesis: This argues that a greater structural complexity of the habitat would promote relatively less visibility of a prey species to its predator and vice versa. The Reception area of the Park, where the hunting occurred, is characterized by open, well-maintained grassland with sparsely spaced tall trees. The natural habitat of wild boars in Bandipur, in contrast, is typically forested with fairly dense undergrowth and the contrasting open Reception area may thus have provided better visibility to the boar and induced an incipient predator-like behaviour to express itself.

The catch

The intra-guild predation hypothesis: A guild is defined as ‘a group of species that exploit the same class of environmental resources in similar way’. Intra-guild Predation refers to situations where two species, competing for shared resources, predate on one another. In this particular case, one of the major food sources for both the bonnet macaques and the wild boars in the Reception area of the Park is provisioning of human origin food by the visiting tourists. Such an anthropogenic foraging option could have potentially turned the two otherwise non-competing species into competitors. As a result, a novel case of asymmetric intra-guild predation could have emerged in this situation. 

The mother with the kill followed by her juveniles

Such observations raise several crucial issues pertaining to the behaviour ecology of species that commonly occur in anthropogenic landscapes. There has hardly been, for example, any systematic study on the behaviour of wild boars, which has the potential to uncover flexibility in behavioral traits such as the reported switch from a more species typical foraging strategy (carrion-feeding) to a more adaptive one (opportunistic  predation). Moreover, the possibility of a wild boar predating on a non-traditional prey species such as a bonnet macaque as a result of competition over human provided food resources, if tenable, has significant implications for their conservation in increasingly prevalent atypical ecological regimes.