Certificate - Etheses - Saurashtra University

4.4 Discussion
We attempted to investigate food habits and seasonal variation in the diet of
Himalayan brown bear in Kugti wildlife sanctuary. Both local and migratory livestock
and bears were found to share food resources and there was intense competition
between them. Brown bears have been found opportunistic omnivores, and they have
developed adaptation for herbivory that included having longer claws for digging soil.
Food habits of brown bear have been studied in many places through direct feeding
observations and scat analysis. The method has been used on a wide range of bear
species to infer dietry composition (Schaller, 1967; Hamer and Herrero, 1987b;
Mattson et al., 1991a; McLellan and Hovey, 1995 and Bargali et al., 2004).
Although the method of fecal analysis has some shortcomings, but it has the
advantage of yielding substantial data without locating or disturbing free-ranging
animals (McLellen and Hovey, 1995). It has been realized by making feeding
observations on bears that it was not possible to precisely measure dietary intake and
composition. Some studies were conducted on the basis of frequency occurrence and
percent weight of different food items in the scats (Mealey, 1980; Nozaki et al., 1983;
Servheen, 1983; Graber and White, 1983; Maehr and Brady, 1984; Mace and Jonkel,
1986; Ohdachi and Aoi, 1987; Cicnjak et al., 1987; Hamer and Herrero, 1987b;
Mattson et al., 1991a; Aune, 1994; Mclellen and Hovey, 1995; Noyce et al., 1997;
Frackowiak, 1997; Dahle et al., 1998; Swenson et al., 1999; MacHutchon and
Wellwood, 2003; Huygens et al., 2003 and Xu et al., 2006). One could find the
frequency of feeding on certain food items or presence of food items in the scats, but
not the quantity of food item(s) consumed. Frequency of feeding was found
dependent on availability of varied types of food material in a particular area. When
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