Food and Feeding Habits of Indian Crested Porcupine in Pench Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, India

摘要

Dietary habits of Indian Crested Porcupine ( )were studied in the Pench Tiger Reserve India (dry tropicalforest), by the faecal analysis. The results of the studysuggest that the porcupines have a diverse diet and the treebarks and seeds were the most consumed items. It wasfollowed by leaves, twigs, flowers and grasses. Seasonally,barks (34.9%), twigs (17.2%), seeds (17.1%), leaves (9.4%),grasses (8.7%), bones (4.9%) and roots (2.6%), stones andothers unidentif ied things (2.2%) and hairs of animals(0.7%) were fed more in winter than summerwhere as seeds(27.3%), barks (23.1%), leaves (11.7 %), grasses (9.9%), roots(6.8%), twigs (6.7%), bones (6.03%), flowers (1.4%) andstones/other things (0.8%), hairs (0.4%) were fed more insummer than winter season. Only barks and twigs werefound to be signif icantly different seasonally. Furthermore,the Berger-Parker index (d) of each season was calculated toensure the variation in diet, by the species dominance ineach faecal matter group. Through this method, diversity infood items of the porcupine reflected that the diet ofporcupine in summer season (2.2) was more diversif ied ascompared to the porcupine diet in the winter season (1.835).Overall the diet of the porcupine comprises 92% vegetativematter and remaining 6.3% comprises of animal mattersand 1.5% other materials (stones, threads, etc). Hence, it isconsidered asageneralist herbivore.