A Question of Interest to Game Managers Is the Hunting

question 26

Essay

A question of interest to game managers is the hunting strategy of predators. Do they just take the first prey that comes along, or are the selective? In a study of winter prey selection in a National Park, radio-tagged wolves were observed to have killed prey according to the table below. Wolves were identified as the predators by their tracks in the snow. At the most recent census in the National Park there were about 3,500 white-tailed deer, 1,000 elk, and 500 moose. Do these data provide sufficient evidence at the .05 level that the wolves are not selecting their prey at random? That is, is there evidence that the proportion of deer, elk, and moose killed by wolves are not in the same proportion as in the park population? Justify your response with an appropriate statistical analysis.

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