Temporal aspects of feeding events in tammar (Macropus eugenii) and parma (Macropus parma) wallabies. I. Food acquisition and oral processing

Abstract

We studied parameters that influence the efficiency of food acquisition and oral processing in the tammar wallaby (a grazer) and the parma wallaby (a grazer/browser), both in captivity and under free range on Kawau Island, New Zealand.

In captivity, both species spent less time feeding per gram of dry matter intake when browsing than when grazing, and there were no significant differences between the species with respect to the rates of feeding per gram of dry matter intake of a given food. However, under free-ranging conditions, tammar wallabies spent longer feeding than did parma wallabies, so it was likely that tammar wallabies spent more time grazing than browsing. Differences in the relationships between feeding event and inter-feed interval duration in captive and free-ranging wallabies indicated that feeding behaviour was influenced by different factors in the two situations.

Microtemporal analysis of the chewing sounds of free-ranging tammar and parma wallabies showed that the interval between the first and second sounds in a 'run' of chewing sounds was longer than that between subsequent intervals, indicating that there was a time cost associated with food aquisition. However, as there were no significant differences between the two wallaby species, either in the mean duration of 'runs' of chewing sounds within feeding events or in the mean duration of whole feeding events, this cost was similar for grazing and browsing. Chewing characteristics differed from those of larger (eutherian) herbivores in that the numbers of chews in a run were not randomly distributed, both species having a preponderance of runs with seven chews. Whilst, the intervals between the second and subsequent chewing sounds in a run did not vary in a periodic manner, such as would occur in batch processing of food, they were more prolonged in runs with more chewing sounds and were significantly longer in tammar wallabies than in parma wallabies. Thus, the slower rate of oral processing of grass was likely due to a generally slower rate of chewing when grazing than when browsing.