A SECOND OBSERVATION OF PREDATION ON RINGTAIL POSSUMS (PSEUDOCHEIRUS PEREGRINUS) BY TASMANIAN TIGER SNAKES (NOTECHIS SCUTA TUS)

摘要

Tiger snakes from the main island of Tasmania are generalist carnivores, predating on a wide range of small and medium vertebrates including amphibians, reptiles, fish, birds and mammals (Fearn et al. 2012). Perhaps reflecting Tasmania's rich small mammal fauna, tiger snakes from the island State display the most diverse diet of any large Australian elapid snakes studied to date (Fearn et al. 2012; Oliver et al. 2010). In a previous work it was speculated that juvenile ringtail possums may be regularly predated upon by adult tiger snakes in districts where possum densities were high, thus increasing encounter rates by foraging snakes (Oliver et al. 2010). In this work we record a further apparent record of a tiger snake predating on a juvenile ringtail possum in Tasmania.