Abstract
To analyze the food habits of the wild boar (Sus scrofa), we collected stomach contents from 294 wild boars from Iwami District, Shimane Prefecture, western Japan, between April 1998 and March 1999. The frequency of occurrence and the proportion of each food item in the contents were analyzed using the point-frame method. Vegetable matter, which was categorized into bamboos, dicotyledons, tubers, plant fibers, and acorns, occurred more frequently in their diet than animal matter, and also constituted the bulk of the food ingested. Wild boars mainly ate bamboos (mean proportion in total stomach content, 57.9%) in season I (May–June), dicotyledons (27.6%) in season II (July–September), tubers (43.3%) in season III (October–December), and plant fibers (30.3%) in season IV (January–March). Wild boars also ate acorns from season III to IV (20.0% and 20.4%, respectively). Compared with other wild boar populations, the wild boars in our study had a stronger tendency to eat the underground parts of plants consistently throughout the year, except during summer.
