g. potatoes) (Pasitschniak-Arts, 1993; Cosmosmith, 2011). In many urban areas across developed countries, households may regularly put out food for urban carnivores such as badgers and even foxes. Roper (2010) reported that 29% of householders surveyed in Brighton deliberately provided food for foxes, badgers and other mammals, and over half of these households were providing food

every night. Lewis et al. (1993) reported an individual person regularly feeding red foxes within a Californian urban park, providing an average (±sd) of 7.12 ± 0.23 kg day−1 of beef, chicken, turkey and fish (measured over a 48-day period) to the Tanespimycin mouse ∼40 foxes present in the park (∼0.177 kg per fox per day). Even if the food is not left deliberately, many wild carnivores will regularly take dog or cat food left accessible. For example, in Zürich, when pet food was present in a fox stomach, it made up the majority of the stomach contents (Contesse et al., 2004). With the high energy content of anthropogenic www.selleckchem.com/products/SB-203580.html food, one or two households leaving out food may have a significant effect on the foraging behaviour of these animals. One of the greatest advantages of anthropogenic food sources may be that they are more reliable compared with natural food sources. For example, urban coyotes show a seasonal pattern in some dietary foods (e.g. fruit) but also eat

refuse (as do those in more rural areas if they can access it) (Quinn, 1997a), which is less

likely to be seasonally affected. Similarly, although red foxes are eclectic feeders and can easily adapt to variation in food types available (Reynolds & Tapper, 1995), seasonal variation of London fox diet appears to be less MCE pronounced than in rural foxes (Harris, 1981b). Even so, some seasonal variation in diet has still been demonstrated for certain urban red fox populations (Oxford: Doncaster et al., 1990, e.g. Zürich: Contesse et al., 2004). In rural areas of Britain and Ireland, the most favoured badger habitats are broad-leaf woodlands and meadows (Feore & Montgomery, 1999) that provide them with access to large numbers of earthworms (Kruuk, 1978, 1989). However, in an urban environment, badgers seem to avoid open grasslands (lawns, playing fields, etc.) within their home ranges (supporting the contention that they are opportunistic generalists rather than earthworm specialists; Roper, 1994). Instead, urban badgers expand their diet range to include more anthropogenic food sources (e.g. refuse and garden crops) to the extent that earthworms are seasonally only a minor dietary component (Harris, 1984; Huck et al., 2008b). Review of the literature indicates many anecdotal statements (but few records) regarding causes of mortality in urban carnivores. Causes of mortality can also be dynamic, with principal causes shifting over time, making it difficult to carry out direct comparison between urban and rural environments.