The Tiger and the Dhole: A Skeptical Analysis

Cats and dogs have always been rivals to the core, and not just the domestic ones. Out in the wild, they really don’t get along. Tigers kill and drive out wolves to the point of almost local extinction, lions kill painted dogs, wolves kill cougars, cougars kill lone wolves, cougars kill coyotes and maned wolves, leopards kill lone painted dogs and dholes, leopards get chased by packs of both, well you get the idea. The relationship between tigers and dholes is no exception, and in the old days, people like Kenneth Anderson report instances of dholes killing tigers. People disagree on if the stories are true or not. Personally, I have a very hard time believing these incidents actually happened. But I’m going to explain why, so let’s look at the situation, shall we?  

Pack Size

The reports state the dholes were in big groups numbering 30 or more animals, and Rudyard Kipling’s story “Red Dog” had the dholes run in a pack of over 100 if I recall correctly. Do dholes ever get in these numbers? I spoke with Jan Kamler on the subject, he believes the stories to be true and argues that dholes, like wolves in Yellowstone, need to be in big groups to defend territory. I did stumble upon A.J.T Johnsingh’s book “On Jim Corbett’s Trail and Other Tales From Tree Tops” and read the chapter on dholes called “The Whistling Hunter” and ended up learning a lot about dholes. While reading, I found one observation of his where the pack of 15 he studied was suddenly reduced down to 7 or 8 prior to the birth of a litter of 8. He didn’t expect this at all, but it happened. He then realized that the emigration of part of a pack before the arrival of a litter is likely one of the mechanisms for both pack and population size. Interestingly, Arun Venkataraman proved that when the size of a dhole pack increases, meat consumption decreases for each dhole. The less you eat, the less energy you have, so in theory, a pack of 15 should have more energy than a pack of 30 or more. This suggests that higher pack numbers aren’t too good for dholes. Johnsigh also stated that in his pack of 15, each dhole ate on average 1.8 kg of meat in a single sitting, but on big carcasses, they can eat up to 5 kg of meat. Also, I was able to talk to Johnsingh by email, which made me happy. He did tell me that meat consumption would be related to the amount of prey around. Meaning each dhole eats more meat when more game is around I guess. I told Kamler about dholes eating less when the pack grows, he still argued that large canids still get in large packs to defend territories from other groups, and he showed me a paper on wolves in Yellowstone on their territorial battles and pack size, and another biologist told me that fighting among packs could be a factor in the bigger packs in Yellowstone. I then asked Doug Smith, a great wolf expert on if some wolves would leave a pack before the arrival of a litter like the dhole. He told me this. 

“NO pack size prior to birth is much more stable.”  

So while dholes do that, wolves don’t. I should also say that big dhole packs of up to 25 have been reported, but Venkataraman explains that’s probably because of the absence of suitable areas for emigrants of a pack to occupy. Of course, Kamler still uses the same territory argument, and asked Jonhsingh if he had anything to say about his arguments, he told me that if it was out of territory defense,  they may not allow their number to go down. Makes sense, if dholes did get in big groups to defend the territory from other packs, why would they allow their number to go down? He also told me that if all 15 dholes stayed, it would be difficult for them to raise the 8 pups the alpha female had. This makes me come to the conclusion that dholes act that way as a method of making sure there aren’t too many mouths to feed. There is one source just about any person will use to make arguments in favor of the accounts, and that would be the show made by the Kratt Brothers called “Wild Kratts”, and there’s an episode called “The Dhole Duplicator”, (horrendous excuse for an episode by the way) they also made a “wow fact” for their facebook page
      

There are 2 things wrong with this, one is there is no correlation between the bodyweight of prey killed and the size of a pack, and second is that Johnsingh never observed two packs operating in the same area, suggesting that they are indeed territorial. Why they would ever merge with another group just to kill something really big is beyond me, and it’s important to note that these guys still quote Siberian Tigers being the largest of the big cats, which is no longer true, we now know that they aren’t any bigger than a Bengal Tiger. Even worse is they quote the symbiotic relationship between the Honey Badger and the Honey Guide is an actual thing even though its been disproven, and even worse is that they somehow mistake a Mule Deer for a Whitetail at the end of the turkey episode, and they show a cougar announcing its presence to a wolf pack and then leaping onto the ground and fighting them, even though in real life a cougar wouldn’t dream of doing, not everything they’ve said or shown is correct, which is very disappointing. 

In conclusion, dholes may get close to 30 in certain circumstances, but in normal healthy conditions, they don’t. But how did tales of packs so big come to be? K. Ullas Karanth in his book “A View From the Machan” states that the combination of the thick cover and their quick movements makes counting all the members of a pack not be so easy at times, suggesting that those who reported the packs could have easily miscounted. 

Witnesses  

Eyewitnesses include people like Kenneth Anderson, many claims that he had no reason to lie, but here’s what Johnsingh told me about him.  
“May not be true. Definitely, Kenneth Anderson was a real storyteller.”  
A real storyteller, perhaps Anderson wasn’t as great of an eyewitness after all. Many naturalists like R. W Burton, Sterndale, Conell, and Dunbar Brander wrote of dholes killing tigers, however, many never actually saw the incidents, they just quoted them. The accounts came from any random people across India, and we must keep in mind that people will make a good story to be able to tell one. There is an account reported by the Zoological Survey of India in 1963 where a pack of 12 dholes chased a tiger off a kill, many will argue that this is indisputable proof, however, this isn’t a source we can really call scientific, and it’s agreed by tiger experts that the first study done on tigers in India was done with the publishing of George Schaller’s book in 1967, and serious research on dholes began in the 1970s, including a 3 month field study done by Johnsingh and Micheal Fox. Kamler told me that if I didn’t believe his story or any of the other ones that I was assuming they were all liars, which I wasn’t. I was just saying that many of them never actually saw the event, that’s all, that was only said about Anderson.  I should also say that in an article in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Burton recommended using Strychnine bihydrochloride to poison dholes as he thought that because the deer population in India was decreasing, that it should be the Imperial Forest Department’s policy to offer rewards to encourage the extermination of dholes. In other words, he blamed dholes for depleting deer populations! Which scientists now know isn’t even close to being true. Basically, with the people that write about it, I just find something off about the information they present. I should also say that the accounts in those days weren’t scientific, but why even bother quoting them at all? The answer could be that since they didn’t have cameras are anything like that to document findings, they didn’t have a choice but to rely on eyewitness testimony even if they didn’t see the events firsthand, which may have led them to believe the stories. Location is another thing, the accounts come from only one country, India. There were many hunters in Asia at the time, as well as other people in the wilderness, so it’s odd that there aren’t any accounts of dholes killing tigers coming from Nepal, China, or Cambodia. Predators killing other predators is not confined to one country unless they live on an island only. Lions kill their competitors in many countries and environments, same with tigers and pretty much any other large predator. 

The Tiger 

The accounts describe the tiger killing some of the dholes before being finished off, one account describes the tiger killing 12 out of 22 dholes in a fight. Such actions have costs and rewards. The rewards of such actions are the elimination of a competitor and a threat to the pups. The costs are that with a reduction in pack size, now hunting will be less efficient, the pups' chances of survival are lower because there are fewer adults to care for them, and now they’re more at risk of being overpowered by another bigger pack. As we can see, the cost here is very high, and a tiger is several times heavier than a dhole, and if dholes hunted tigers, they would surely lose a good amount of vital pack members, which won’t have any survival value for them. Let’s say there is a pack of 33 that was great at tiger hunting, let’s say that once they lose 2, another time 7, and another time 6. Basically, every time that pack would do that, they would always lose members, making the pack size decrease every time they do that, and it isn’t like dholes breed constantly, that isn’t how they work. Raghunandan Chundawat made a good point when I asked him on his views, saying that if a tiger felt threatened by a dhole pack, it would be very easily able to escape, as dholes aren’t large enough to stop one from escaping. We also have enough scientific evidence to say that tigers to indeed dominate dholes.  

Expert Opinions

Every person is entitled to their opinion on every subject, but I thought it would be good to mention those I talked to or that have written their thoughts in literature that do not believe that dholes hunt and kill healthy tigers.  
K. Ullas Karanth: Believes it would make no sense for dholes to hunt healthy tigers as they would lose many members, which won’t have any survival value for them. 
William Blandford: Thinks it’s improbable that dholes hunt tigers 
Scottie Westfall: Expert on canids and animals, in general, doesn’t believe dholes would hunt tigers as a tiger can do lots of damage to a dhole, and that would make the pack less able to hunt large game. 
Mauricio Anton: Told me that it would depend on the state the animals are in, and doubts dholes could kill a tiger in its prime even by a large pack. Here’s his reason. 
“Dholes will have a hard time killing a prime tiger because each dog is much smaller and weaker than the tiger so that during a confrontation there would be a high number of dog casualties. Wild animals normally don’t engage in that kind of warfare. Any confrontation is normally related to competition for resources and animals put self preservation first.”

Vratislav Mazak: In literature says that it seems dholes can only kill sick or otherwise weakened tigers 
Raghunandan Chundawat: Finds it unlikely a tiger would be killed by dholes as when a tiger realizes it’s in danger, it should be able to escape very easily from them, as they aren’t large enough to stop it from escaping. 
Staff at the Wilds: As much as they respect dholes, they don’t believe it would be very rare for dholes to kill tigers, and if it does happen, they would kill really sick or injured animals. 
Save China’s Tigers group: Also doubt this would be a common occurrence, and that the tigers may have been in bad conditions.  
Chelsea Davis (executive director of the Dhole Conservation Fund): Doesn’t think dholes kill tigers and agrees that tigers win more fights.     
Arjun Srivathsa: He says this. 
“There are surely some old accounts about dholes killing tigers. While there is a lot of agonistic interactions between the two species, I would not expect dholes killing tigers to be commonplace. A large pack can maim and injure a tiger, but there would certainly be more instances of tigers killing and sometimes perhaps eating dholes. I am a bit weary about the veracity of historical observations/notes– wouldn't blindly trust all of it.”   
And also this. 
“Tigers are socially dominant to dholes. There are documented records of tigers killing dholes (photographs, sightings, and also dhole hair in tiger scat). Dhole may at best chase tigers off their kills, if the pack is sufficiently large and the tiger is relatively young. But I dont think dholes kill tigers or eat them.”

    

Literature 

Here is some information from literature I was able to find. 
“This one was of the most interesting interactions of tiger seen by me in Pench Tiger Reserve, Seoni. T-50 or “Langdi” had come out of the water hole and was resting in the shade of a nearby tree. I waited for almost two hours in the scorching heat, thinking that she would come again to cool her off in the water hole. In the meantime, a large pack of 18 dholes reached the water hole and soon they all were in the water. As I had expected, the tigress rose and started walking towards the water hole. As soon as the dholes saw her they all rushed out of the water. Now the forest was echoing with their shrieking yell. They all made a sort of ring around the tigress keeping a safe distance and kept harassing her.” (Sanjay Shukla) 

From the study, “Tigers, Leopards, and Dholes in a half-empty forest: Assessing species interactions in a guild of threatened carnivores” 

Dholes

generally, have much larger home ranges and lower densities than
predicted for their size, possibly because they must range widely to

avoid tigers (Woodroffe and Ginsberg, 2005). African wild dogs (Ly-
caon pictus), which are similarly-sized competitively-subordinate

canids, also range very widely (and thus occur at low density) to
avoid larger predators (Woodroffe, 2001).  

From the book, “The Biology and Conservation of Wild Canids” 

“However, anecdotal information from naturalists and hunters (Singh 1998) suggest that dholes have always lived at very low densities in the Corbett and Dudhwa Parks, in the terai region. Probably disease or the high densities of tigers were responsible for the low densities of dholes in these habitats. “(Johnsingh 1985)

From the book, “Large Carnivores and the Conservation of Biodiversity”  

“At 19 sites in Indonesia, Myanmar, and Thailand, all within the dhole's historic range, dhole are absent from areas where tigers are photographed more frequently;(t17  =2.23, p less than 0.05; Wildlife Conservation Society unpublished data; a total of over 28,000 camera trap-nights)

So there you have my skeptical analysis of those stories. Check these 2 articles. Credits to Scottie Westfall, A.J.T Johnsingh, Doug Smith, and others for helping in this. 

Lies, damned lies, and honey badgers - Not Exactly Rocket Science …     
Amur Tiger Ecology    
And also Johnsingh’s book if you want to buy it for yourself
On Jim Corbett's Trail and Other Tales from Tree-tops    

Here’s Johnsingh’s chapter on the dhole in his book.

https://books.google.com/books?id=KoCejHiL2CIC&pg=PA41&dq=dholes+vs+tiger&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjnrM-K0s_hAhUBKK0KHSgcA7gQ6AEIXzAJ#v=onepage&q=dholes%20vs%20tiger&f=false      
Here’s “A View from the Machan: How Science Can Save the Fragile Predator” 
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W6ks4b0l7NgC&pg=PA57&dq=I+learnt+that+tigers+routinely+prey+on+adult+gaur+five+times+their+own+weight&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiD3-uV_vneAhVKI8AKHRVsATAQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=dholes%20vs%20tiger&f=false     

The Cat Specialist Group 
http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=4&L=0%253Fid%253D192%253Fid%253D49%253Fid%253D31%253Fid%253D%27%22       
Arjun Srivathsa’s website 
https://www.arjunsrivathsa.org/      

Scottie Westfall’s Nature Blog. 
https://retrieverman.net/