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Evidence of scavenging behaviour in crested porcupine

The vegetarian diet of many herbivorous mammals is supplemented with proteins of animal origin, especially in young individuals and in breeding females, to provide key proteins necessary for both growth and breeding. Among porcupine species, only the Cape porcupine (Hystrix africaeaustralis) has bee...

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Autores principales: Coppola, Francesca, Guerrieri, Denise, Simoncini, Andrea, Varuzza, Paolo, Vecchio, Giuseppe, Felicioli, Antonio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7378177/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32704027
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-69252-z
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author Coppola, Francesca
Guerrieri, Denise
Simoncini, Andrea
Varuzza, Paolo
Vecchio, Giuseppe
Felicioli, Antonio
author_facet Coppola, Francesca
Guerrieri, Denise
Simoncini, Andrea
Varuzza, Paolo
Vecchio, Giuseppe
Felicioli, Antonio
author_sort Coppola, Francesca
collection PubMed
description The vegetarian diet of many herbivorous mammals is supplemented with proteins of animal origin, especially in young individuals and in breeding females, to provide key proteins necessary for both growth and breeding. Among porcupine species, only the Cape porcupine (Hystrix africaeaustralis) has been observed to consume carrion flesh. From June to August 2019, a pigeon carcass was placed together with corn in 7 study settlements and near 2 monitored capture-traps, in order to assess the carrion flesh feeding habits of the crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata). Scavenging behaviour was recorded on four occasions. All the recorded individuals were adults and at least one was female. This demonstrates that the crested porcupine occasionally does eat flesh. Such evidence raises important questions concerning the relationship between feeding habits and the physiological needs of this herbivorous rodent.
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spelling pubmed-73781772020-07-24 Evidence of scavenging behaviour in crested porcupine Coppola, Francesca Guerrieri, Denise Simoncini, Andrea Varuzza, Paolo Vecchio, Giuseppe Felicioli, Antonio Sci Rep Article The vegetarian diet of many herbivorous mammals is supplemented with proteins of animal origin, especially in young individuals and in breeding females, to provide key proteins necessary for both growth and breeding. Among porcupine species, only the Cape porcupine (Hystrix africaeaustralis) has been observed to consume carrion flesh. From June to August 2019, a pigeon carcass was placed together with corn in 7 study settlements and near 2 monitored capture-traps, in order to assess the carrion flesh feeding habits of the crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata). Scavenging behaviour was recorded on four occasions. All the recorded individuals were adults and at least one was female. This demonstrates that the crested porcupine occasionally does eat flesh. Such evidence raises important questions concerning the relationship between feeding habits and the physiological needs of this herbivorous rodent. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-07-23 /pmc/articles/PMC7378177/ /pubmed/32704027 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-69252-z Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Coppola, Francesca
Guerrieri, Denise
Simoncini, Andrea
Varuzza, Paolo
Vecchio, Giuseppe
Felicioli, Antonio
Evidence of scavenging behaviour in crested porcupine
title Evidence of scavenging behaviour in crested porcupine
title_full Evidence of scavenging behaviour in crested porcupine
title_fullStr Evidence of scavenging behaviour in crested porcupine
title_full_unstemmed Evidence of scavenging behaviour in crested porcupine
title_short Evidence of scavenging behaviour in crested porcupine
title_sort evidence of scavenging behaviour in crested porcupine
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7378177/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32704027
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-69252-z
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