# Consumption of fleshy fruit: Are central European carnivores really less frugivorous than southern European carnivores?

> Do foxes, badgers and martens in Central Europe really eat less fruit than their southern cousins? A botanist pooled decades of scat and stomach studies from Spain to Scandinavia and found that, season for season, fruit is just as much on the menu in the north. What matters most is what grows nearby, from wild cherries to orchard apples.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2015-kurek-consumption-fleshy-fruit-central/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** Przemysław Kurek
- **Year published:** 2015
- **Journal or source:** Mammalian Biology
- **Full citation:** Kurek, P. 2015. Consumption of fleshy fruit: are central European carnivores really less frugivorous than southern European carnivores? Mammalian Biology 80(6): 527–534.
- **DOI:** 10.1016/j.mambio.2015.10.001
- **Access status:** Publisher link only
- **Where to find it:** https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mambio.2015.10.001

## Tags

- **Species:** Mammals > European badger; Mammals > Pine marten; Mammals > Red fox; Mammals > Stone marten
- **Region:** Europe > Belarus; Europe > Czech Republic; Europe > Denmark; Europe > Finland; Europe > France; Europe > Germany; Europe > Greece; Europe > Hungary; Europe > Italy; Europe > Lithuania; Europe > Norway; Europe > Poland; Europe > Romania; Europe > Spain; Europe > Sweden
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Feeding
- **Methods and technology:** Analysis of variance (ANOVA); Literature review; Pearson correlation
- **Data type:** Existing data; Review
- **Observer qualification:** Not needed
- **Discipline:** Behaviour and ecology
- **Year published:** 2015

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied (from published diet studies): stone marten (Martes foina), pine marten (Martes martes), red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and badger (Meles meles); martens were analysed together or separately, depending on whether the original authors identified the species. Food remains: seeds of 35 fruit types eaten by carnivores in Central Europe, 25 identified to species level, including cherries, plums and sloes (Prunus cerasus, P. domestica, P. cerasifera, P. spinosa, P. padus, P. serotina), apples (Malus sp.), pears (Pyrus sp.), brambles and raspberry (Rubus sp., R. idaeus), rowan (Sorbus aucuparia), alder buckthorn (Frangula alnus), strawberries (Fragaria sp.), roses (Rosa canina/Rosa sp.), bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), cowberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea), cranberry (Oxycoccus palustris), elder (Sambucus nigra, S. racemosa), juniper (Juniperus communis), yew (Taxus baccata), hawthorn (Crataegus sp.), grapevine (Vitis vinifera), lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis), mistletoe (Viscum album) and others (Table 1; common plant names are ours, the paper gives scientific names only). Mentioned but not analysed: other carnivores (left out because data on their diets were rare and fragmentary).
- **Location and habitat:** Continental Europe from the Iberian Peninsula to central Scandinavia and north-eastern Belarus (37° to 61° N, 8° W to 31° E; the appendix includes one Norwegian site at 63.37° N), British Isles excluded. Mediterranean, temperate (Central Europe) and boreal zones; only areas no more than 800 m above sea level. For this paper, “Central Europe” means eastern Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. Source studies (appendix) come from Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Lithuania, Belarus, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Habitats discussed include forests (for example Białowieża Forest), farmland, villages and ecotonal scrub between forest and open land.
- **Topics:** frugivory (fruit-eating) by carnivores; fleshy versus dry fruit; geographical gradients (latitude and longitude) in diet; seasonal (summer and autumn) versus year-round diet; richness of fruit species in the diet; local plant diversity and fruit availability; human-changed landscapes (orchards, forest and open-land mosaics); opportunistic feeding; how researchers define the “fruit” category; scat (faeces) and stomach content analysis; frequency of occurrence (O%) and percentage of biomass (B%).
- **Statistics or models:** Multiple regression (latitude and longitude as explanatory variables); Pearson correlation; analysis of variance (ANOVA) comparing martens, badgers and foxes; log or exponential transformation of data; significance level 0.05; Statistica 8.0. Inconsistencies: (1) The abstract says the analysis did not confirm that frugivory varies with latitude, but the results report a significant link between frequency of occurrence of fleshy fruit in summer and autumn and latitude (p = 0.036 in Table 2; overall model p = 0.029). The discussion calls the gradients “weak trends”. (2) The correlation between number of fruit species and frequency of occurrence (r = 0.912, p = 0.088) is called “close to significance” in the results, but the discussion says it confirms hypothesis 3 and the abstract calls it a “strong” correlation. (3) Table 2 gives t with 114 degrees of freedom, while the Table 3 t-values fit very few data points; the sample sizes behind each test are not stated. (4) In the appendix, several sites in southern Spain (for example Doñana) are listed with positive (east) longitudes, although the methods say the Iberian data lie in western longitudes.
- **Data type:** Existing data and review: 158 published diet studies from 1970 to 2010 were examined, and 78 records were used in the statistics (badgers 25 studies from 18 study areas, foxes 21 studies from 19 areas, martens 32 studies from 22 areas). The appendix also includes studies published after 2010 (up to 2013).

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

Many researchers have said that carnivores in southern Europe eat more fruit than those further north, because the south has more fruiting plants and longer fruiting seasons. The author, a botanist, suspected that fruit-eating by carnivores in Central Europe had been underestimated, and set out to check this against the published diet studies.

He tested three ideas:

- Carnivores in Central Europe eat about as much fleshy fruit as the same species in southern Europe, when the same season is compared.

- The only difference is the variety of fruit species eaten, which should be greater in the south.

- Wherever they live, carnivores that eat more kinds of fruit also eat more fruit overall.

He examined 158 published diet studies of European carnivores from 1970 to 2010, and chose 78 records on the three most generalist groups for analysis: badgers, red foxes and martens (stone and pine martens). The data came from scat (faeces) and stomach analyses between southern Spain and central Scandinavia. To make the studies comparable he kept only sites up to 800 m above sea level, kept summer and autumn data separate from year-round data, left out studies where dry fruit (such as hazelnuts, walnuts, chestnuts, maize and acorns) made up more than 5% of the “fruit”, and used only studies reporting frequency of occurrence (O%) or percentage of biomass (B%). He took each site’s latitude and longitude from the study or from Google Earth, and tested for links with geography.

### 2. What they found

Fruit eaten in Central Europe

- Carnivores in Central Europe ate 35 types of fleshy fruit, 25 identified to species. Pine martens and red foxes ate 18 species each, badgers 16 and stone martens 15.

- Important fruits were cultivated and wild Prunus (cherries, plums, sloes and bird cherry), apples and pears. Brambles, rowan, alder buckthorn, strawberries, roses and bilberry were also eaten.

How much fruit (summer and autumn, Central Europe)

- Martens: fruit in 41.8% of samples on average (up to 100%), 30.6% of biomass.

- Badgers: fruit in 38.0% of samples (up to 82.5%), 16.3% of biomass.

- Foxes: fruit in 27.8% of samples (up to 81.0%), 14.3% of biomass.

- These differences between the three groups were not significant, either for summer and autumn or for the whole year. Each group ate on average about 7 fruit species.

Geography

- How often fruit appeared in summer and autumn diets was significantly linked to latitude (less fruit further north), but not to longitude. Fruit biomass showed no significant link.

- With year-round data, there was no significant link with latitude or longitude.

- Southern sites had the most fruit species in the diet, but the decline northward was not significant. Sites at almost the same location could differ by as many as 12 fruit species between studies.

- The number of fruit species in the diet and how often fruit appeared in summer and autumn were closely correlated (r = 0.912), but this fell just short of statistical significance (p = 0.088). There was no significant correlation for biomass or year-round data.

### 3. What they concluded

- The author concludes that fruit-eating by these carnivores does not clearly vary across Europe by latitude or longitude, and that only weak trends exist between southern Spain and the Baltic states. This contradicts earlier work.

- One reason is that southern researchers often count dry fruit, such as nuts and acorns, as “fruit”, while northern researchers usually mean only fleshy fruit. Year-round data also favour the south, where fruit is available for longer. The author suggests dry and fleshy fruit should be counted separately.

- When the same season is compared, carnivores at different latitudes appear to use fruit equally where it is available.

- How much fruit carnivores eat depends mostly on local fruit availability and plant diversity, which vary widely within short distances. Scrubby edges between forest and open land are especially rich in fruit species.

- Fruit in carnivore diets may be partly a result of human changes to the landscape, such as orchards and mosaics of forest and open land. In Central Europe, carnivores in natural forest ate less fruit than those in more human-changed places.

- The author treats hypothesis 3 as confirmed, although the correlation was not statistically significant (see the detailed keywords).

### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

- A standardised way of pooling published diet data: same season, same measures, altitude limit and a rule for dry fruit.

- Google Earth was used to find coordinates when a study did not give them.

### 7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

- The paper does not discuss conservation directly. It notes that fruit is an important food for these opportunistic carnivores almost everywhere, and that orchards, scrubby edges and other human-changed landscapes can shape how much fruit they eat.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- Fruit seeds and skins in fox, badger and marten scats are common in summer and autumn across Europe, including the north. A scat full of fruit remains is not by itself a sign of a southern population or an unusual animal.

- Because fruit-eating depends so much on what grows locally, knowing the fruiting shrubs and trees in an area (for example cherries, sloes, brambles and rowan) can help trackers predict where these carnivores feed and what their scats may contain at that time of year.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Consumption of fleshy fruit: Are central European carnivores really less frugivorous than southern European carnivores? (Kurek, 2015). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2015-kurek-consumption-fleshy-fruit-central/