Diet of Jungle Crows in an Urban Landscape

Abstract

 An animal species’ diet constitutes the basic ecology of that species and is indispensable for understanding its population dynamics. As jungle crows have increased in the urban areas of Tokyo, conflicts between humans and crows have increased. Since highly urbanized areas are poor in natural food resources, it is possible that jungle crows depend heavily on human-related food in Tokyo. We have, therefore, determined their diet and compared the results with those of other regions, taking steps firstly, to assess the reliability of information from pellets, feces and direct observations of feeding crows.

 Jungle crows exploit a wide variety of food in response to temporal and seasonal availability in urban as well as rural areas. Their winter diet consists primarily of plant matter, suggesting that they retain their original food habit of eating fruits and berries of trees and shrubs, even at a heavily urbanized site. The proportion of food scraps in their diet was similar to that of animal matter in our study, suggesting an unusually ample availability of anthropogenic food sources in this city. If food scraps in Tokyo could be reduced, a great proportion of the food currently available to the crows would be lost, driving down the carrying capacity. We suggest ecological studies be conducted before making some action plans to solve wildlife issues.