Compared with densely populated city centres, suburbs and towns support greater natural resources and therefore provide more opportunity for urban carnivores. Thirdly, Iossa et al. (2010) pointed out that there is a high prevalence of populations of feral and stray dogs in developing countries, which might limit the presence of carnivore species (e.g. Vanak & Gompper, 2009; Vanak, Thaker & Gompper, 2009). Finally, across the globe, people will respond differently to carnivores entering urban environments,

which may contribute to differences in reporting ratio. In India, culturally based tolerance towards carnivores allows many small carnivores and even leopards Panthera pardus, wolves, sloth bears Melursus ursinus and striped check details hyaenas to persist among high human population densities, albeit in agricultural landscapes (Karanth & Chellam, Enzalutamide in vitro 2009). In south China, large and small carnivore species have been extirpated or greatly reduced in numbers; ironically, it is in mostly highly urbanized Hong Kong, with strong legal protection, where surviving species can be most easily encountered (Lau, Fellowes & Chan, 2010). Outside of anecdotal information, we could find no reports of carnivores living in African cities,

despite a vast array of carnivore species on the continent. This may reflect the nature of urbanization or the nature of predator guilds in Africa: large expanses pheromone of adjacent rural or undeveloped habitat may provide sufficient alternative resources,

while human self-preservation or protection of livestock may preclude the establishment of some carnivore species close to urban areas. All major terrestrial carnivore families have representatives that show some degree of association with human settlement (Fig. 3a). There appears to be no taxonomic restriction in terms of an ability to exploit urban environments. The major restrictions may therefore be in terms of body size and dietary flexibility. Body size plays an important part in determining whether a carnivore species uses the urban environment. The proportion of species that utilize human habitat – from villages through to cities – is not spread evenly across the range of eutherian terrestrial carnivore body masses (Fig. 3; χ26 = 12.60, P = 0.05). Both small and large carnivores are under-represented in the urban environment. Body size is important in terms of how a species is able to deal with the habitat fragmentation implicit with urban environments. Larger body size is a benefit in human-fragmented agricultural landscapes if it aids the animals’ ability to move in and out of the fragment matrix (e.g. coyotes), but body size should not be too large that viable populations cannot survive in small habitat fragments (Gehring & Swihart, 2003).