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Trash on the Menu:Patterns of Animal Visitation and Foraging Behaviour at Garbage Dumps


Affiliations
1 School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110 067, India
2 Asian Adventures, New Delhi 110 065, India
3 Nature Science Initiative, 36 Curzon Road, Dehradun 248 001, India
 

Garbage accumulation around terrestrial nature re-serves poses a risk to many species. We monitored animal visitation patterns and foraging behaviour at garbage dumps near a forested area in Uttarakhand Himalaya, India, to examine plastic consumption by animals. We recorded 32 species of birds and mam-mals visiting garbage dumps and classified them as ‘peckers’, ‘handlers’ and ‘gulpers’ based on their foraging behaviour. Gulpers (carnivores and rumi-nants) were observed feeding more frequently and spent longer durations (3.8 ± 0.2 min) at garbage dumps. Our results highlight the importance of at-source segregation of waste to prevent wild and domestic animals from ingesting hazardous wastes, including plastics at garbage dumps.

Keywords

Animal Visitation, Foraging Behaviour, Terrestrial Vertebrates, Unsegregated Garbage.
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  • Trash on the Menu:Patterns of Animal Visitation and Foraging Behaviour at Garbage Dumps

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Authors

Gitanjali Katlam
School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110 067, India
Soumya Prasad
School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110 067, India
Mohit Aggarwal
Asian Adventures, New Delhi 110 065, India
Raman Kumar
Nature Science Initiative, 36 Curzon Road, Dehradun 248 001, India

Abstract


Garbage accumulation around terrestrial nature re-serves poses a risk to many species. We monitored animal visitation patterns and foraging behaviour at garbage dumps near a forested area in Uttarakhand Himalaya, India, to examine plastic consumption by animals. We recorded 32 species of birds and mam-mals visiting garbage dumps and classified them as ‘peckers’, ‘handlers’ and ‘gulpers’ based on their foraging behaviour. Gulpers (carnivores and rumi-nants) were observed feeding more frequently and spent longer durations (3.8 ± 0.2 min) at garbage dumps. Our results highlight the importance of at-source segregation of waste to prevent wild and domestic animals from ingesting hazardous wastes, including plastics at garbage dumps.

Keywords


Animal Visitation, Foraging Behaviour, Terrestrial Vertebrates, Unsegregated Garbage.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv115%2Fi12%2F2322-2326