• DOI:10.1086/284670
• Corpus ID: 85236511

A Flexible Body Mass in Social Carnivores

@article{Earle1987AFB,
  title={A Flexible Body Mass in Social Carnivores},
  author={Michael Earle},
  journal={The American Naturalist},
  year={1987},
  volume={129},
  pages={755 - 760}
}

• Michael Earle
• Published 1 May 1987
• Environmental Science
• The American Naturalist

Increased hunting efficiency and the ability to pursue relatively large prey have generally been considered among the primary benefits of carnivore sociality (Kruuk 1972; Schaller 1972; Kleiman and Eisenberg 1973; Eisenberg 1981; McNab 1983). These advantages were documented by Caraco and Wolf (1975) and Nudds (1978), who examined the interaction between hunting efficiency of foraging groups of different sizes and the energetic returns to individual hunters from various prey species. Recently, theoretical approaches using concepts such as inclusive fitness (Rodman 1981) and evolutionarily stable strategies (Pulliam and Caraco 1984) have been employed to investigate the factors affecting group size. Alternatively, perhaps there is a simple mechanistic explanation for the variation seen in the size of foraging roups of carnivores. Among carnivores panning a wide range of body sizes, the mass of the prey increases with the mass of the individual predator (Rosenzweig 1966; Gittleman 1985; Vezina 1985). If predator mass were an important determinant ofprey size, then a group of predators hould be able to hunt animals larger than the prey of a solitary predator of equivalent individual mass. Conversely, a large individual (e.g., a tiger) should be able to kill prey of approximately the same size as a group of smaller individuals of a similar total mass (e.g., a pack of dholes). It should be noted that this prediction considers only the size of the foraging roup, not the entire social unit in which the predators live (e.g., a hyena clan). I tested the hypothesis that a positive relationship exists between the total mass of the hunting unit (group size times mean adult mass) and the mass of the prey, using the allometric model