Unlike foxes, coyotes, raccoon dogs, and even wolves in some places which eat both meat and plants, dholes are hypercarnivores. Meaning you will never find them eating things like berries or any plant matter whatsoever.
Dholes mostly hunt ungulates, which are what we refer to as hoofed animals. They hunt wild boar, muntjacs, chital deer, sambar deer, rusa deer, Nilgiri tahr, nilgai antelope, and they've even been known to hunt fully-grown banteng, a species of wild cattle.
Across their range, Sambar Deer are the most common prey item for them. In Central India, Chital Deer and Sambar Deer are their favorite prey, and in two studies (One in Laos and the other in both Laos and Cambodia) Muntjacs were shown to be their favorite prey, and in the Cambodia site banteng were their second favorite prey, but this, however, may be due to the lack of other medium-sized ungulates in that region.
(Photo Credit goes to Brent Huffman) Chital Deer
(Photo Credit goes to Sylvain Cordier) Sambar Deer
(Photo Credit goes to Ashok Jain) Red Muntjac
(Photo Credit goes to OATH, Inc) Nilgai
(Photo Credit goes to Ian Peden) Rusa Deer
(Photo Credit goes to Ganesh Gorai) Nilgiri Tahr
(Photo Credit goes to the Sabah Forest Department) Banteng
While dholes mostly hunt ungulates, they'll also prey on smaller animals such as langur monkeys, hares, and rodents. In central India, dholes eat langurs more often than anywhere else in India. A study in Southeast Asia found small bears in the diet of dholes, but they made up less than 1% of their diet, and outside of that area, bears aren't on the menu.
(Picture Credit goes to Stephen D. Nash) Gray Langur Monkey
So dholes take a bit of a variety of prey animals, but how do they hunt and kill their prey?
Dholes hunt in one of three methods.
One method is for the pack to move in an extended line through the scrub; another is for part of the pack to flush prey animals to the rest of the pack waiting on the scrub's edge to intercept prey animals. The third method is for dholes to drive their prey into the water to gain an advantage over them.
(Photo Credit goes to Jayanth Sharma)
Regardless of the method chosen, dholes rarely chase their prey for over 500 meters, their teamwork and speed let them kill an animal in short distances. The reason for this isn't because they can't run very long, they can. It's simply more difficult to chase something over long distances in a forest than in open spaces. Human runners can relate to this, any marathoner will tell you it's easier to run marathons on an open road than in the woods.
Dholes don't have the powerful killing bite of big cats, therefore, they cannot kill animals by asphyxiation as tigers can. Instead, dholes go for an animal's vulnerable body parts such as the rump, flanks, and underbelly and disembowel the animal, with the resulting shock and blood loss weakening the animal which makes it easier for the dholes to bring down their quarry. When attacking stags dholes have a habit of biting onto their noses to avoid the antlers. When it comes to smaller prey, they deliver a bite to the neck and shake it.
(Photo Credits go to Dede Aulia Rahman, Mochamad Syamsudin, Asep Yayus Firdaus, Herry Trisna Afriandi, and Anggodo)
To many people, this may seem horrible, but this is the only way dholes can kill large prey animals, and killing other animals is how they make a living. By hunting and killing large herbivores, they help keep the natural balance in the ecosystems. Another thing we must remember is that hunting for a living isn't easy for predators because many of them fail more than they succeed and prey animals have ways to defend themselves such as hooves, horns, antlers, and social structures.