Hunters I: Felids

Today I come to tell you about hunting strategies in the animal kingdom. It is a very complex and extensive subject, because the "evolutionary arms race" is a phenomenon that has occurred throughout the evolutionary process on earth.

A related concept that may help you understand it a little better is the Red Queen hypothesis. This hypothesis is based on the novel " Through The Looking-Glass", in which the inhabitants of the country ruled by the Red Queen have to move as fast as they can to get to the same place, as the environment moves with them. Similarly in biology, this hypothesis proposed by Van Valen indicates that predators and prey evolve in parallel to continue in the predator-prey state in which they find themselves, developing evolutionary adaptations that could give them the advantage, but they do not achieve it because their parallel also develops others that put them on the same level.

A very simple example could be the cheetah and the gazelle. Two very fast animals. The cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world, hunting the gazelle, which, although slower, has other adaptations such as agility, jumping and grouping that allows it to alert individuals giving it a few moments of advantage, among others. In this way the cheetah hunts some, but it does not finish with the species, and neither does it become extinct because it is capable of hunting some. They remain in the same status quo.

So, in this block of posts, we are going to focus only on the hunters, and not on the prey, and we will see different groups of animals from mammals and birds to small arachnids and insects, explaining some of the most curious ones.

We will start with the most well known, the mammals. And within these, I will dedicate this entry to the wonderful cats.

The lions (Panthera leo). Well, there are things that you all know and are well known: The females are the ones that hunt, they hunt in groups... The lions can hunt alone, in pairs or in groups, and it is true that their success rate is higher in groups, but only around 25-30%.

They are not great strategists. They do not care about the direction of the wind, so many times with the wind against them their scent reveals them before the attack. Same old same old, they are attacking directly and without changing the path of attack. If they miss the first strike, the hunt is usually over.

However, it is suggested that the lionesses are divided into ambush roles or positions (as if they were a football team), with some lionesses on the sides that are lighter and run further, their function being to take the prey to the centre, where there are the more robust lionesses that run less, but knock the prey down more easily.

Medium-sized prey, such as zebras, are killed by biting their throats, while when chasing a large one they climb on top and try to bite the spine to sever the spinal cord.

Lionesses in Etosha National Park. Own pictures.

And you might be thinking, "Well, okay, lions aren't that good hunters... But a cheetah, a tiger or a leopard?

Lions are the typical example of group hunters, and it's true that they are more successful with this strategy, but the rest of cats are generally solo hunters.

As for the tiger (Panthera tigris), the success rate based on observations varies from site to site. In India it is estimated at 5-10% success rate. However, in eastern Russia this figure rises to around 40% (varies depending on the prey). Even so, it is not very efficient. This predator is not the fastest, and its main strategy lies in its camouflage and its strength, as chases in such densely vegetated areas would be difficult to succeed. However, its striped pattern, explosive power and strength allow it to hunt deer and wild boar among other prey.

In the case of leopards (Panthera pardus) it is also very variable, between 14 and 38%. This solitary and territorial predator is capable of living in inhospitable and rocky terrain, and also bases its strategy on explosiveness, like the tiger.

And the most efficient of these three lone hunters is the swift cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), with a success rate of around 58 per cent. However, its prey is stolen by other carnivores on 10% of the occasions. The cheetah is known for its frenetic speed at short distance, which it uses to bring down small to medium sized prey. Its slender body and small head give it aerodynamics, its long tail allows it to act as a rudder giving it stability in those chases, and it has a unique characteristic among cats, which is that its claws are not retractable, giving it a much greater grip.

Tiger hunting a chital, leopard hunting an impala and cheetah hunting a gazelle. Pictures from internet.

Well ok, this fits quite well with the Red Queen hypothesis, they are not unstoppable, but... aren't these rates very low? Aren't there any cats that are more efficient?

Well, one of these cases could be the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), which for me is one of the most spectacular hunters. Unlike other cats, it hunts in high mountains, chasing on snowy slopes. This cat has serious conservation concerns, and its lifestyle is elusive. This, added to the harsh environment in which it lives, makes it very difficult to study, and thus we cannot know how good hunter it is. Similarly it occurs with many species of cats, very elusive and unknown to us.

Video by BBC Earth.

(Here is another video, shocking. Only recommended for people with nerves of steel)

Video by WildFilmsIndia

There are other felines that are adapted to totally different hunting strategies. In Africa, the serval (Leptailurus serval) and the caracal (Caracal caracal) (which is also distributed on part of Asia), are an example of this. These two cats have shorter tails, big ears and very long legs, adapted to jumping, which allow them to reach over 3 m in height (more than three times their length), so their strategy is based mainly on capturing prey in flight.

Serval in Safari Madrid. Own pictures.

Video by Smithsonian Channel

In South America and Asia, the dense vegetation of the ecosystems has promoted the trend of arboreal felids, with long tails and small size, specialized in moving between trees to capture their prey.

Clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) and tigrillo (Leopardus tigrinus). Pictures from internet.

But there are other extreme adaptations, such as the fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), which lives in Asia and has specialised, as its name suggests, in fishing. It is medium sized, but its body is proportionally large among cats, so that it can catch large fish. Its tail is short, as it does not need it for chases on land, and its ears are small, all of which gives it a hydrodynamic body that makes it agile in the water, being a good swimmer and diver.

Video by Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden

And in complete contrast to this, the sand cat (Felis margarita) has adapted to life in a place where there is hardly any water. It has a dense coat, which also covers its pads, allowing it to walk on the desert sand without getting burnt. It walks almost without leaving footprints, and despite having a crouching position with its belly very close to the ground (so as not to be easily seen), it can move very fast, up to 40 km/h. Its ears are huge, adapted to hearing the few prey that inhabit the desert. For this reason, its hunting strategy involves large nocturnal movements in search of these, finding them thanks to its hearing.

Sand cat. Pictures from internet.

These species are very elusive and need much more research on them, so I cannot give you their effectiveness in hunting either. On the contrary, an elusive cat that is somewhat more studied and also lives on the African continent alongside its documentary cousins, wins the prize for the most deadly cat. It is the black-footed cat (Felis nigripes). A small cat of 35-52 cm and 1-2.5 kg in weight. This cat, being much smaller, has a much more accelerated metabolism than its big cousins, and needs to be constantly hunting.

And it does so in three different ways: The first "fast hunting" by bouncing on the tall grass to flush out prey. The second consists of quietly weaving through the landscape, trying to sneak up on a possible meal. And the third one, the ambush: they are able to remain immobile for up to two hours stalking a burrow until the denizen comes out.

Black-footed cat (Felis nigripes). Pictures from internet.

With these techniques, it becomes the most deadly cat on the planet with a 60% success rate in its hunts.

Video by Nature on PBS.

Finally, as a reflective curiosity that I hope will serve to raise awareness, I would like to end this post of the feline hunters with the statistics of some studies focused on our closest cats: the domestic and feral cats.

A study in Australia revealed that they had a success rate of 38%, a figure that increases in the open field to 70%, with only 28% of the captures being eaten by the hunters. Much more efficient than lions, tigers and leopards.

The Mammal Society estimates that in the UK cats hunt 27 million birds each year, and a total of 275 million pieces of prey.

With this data, it is obvious that cats pose a huge problem for the conservation of native species, and not only in the UK but all over the world. This problem is particularly acute on islands where populations of endemic species are very low. It is therefore the responsibility of citizens to keep our cats in our homes as well as our dogs. This has led to action being taken in different parts of the world, such as New Zealand and Australia, just as we are beginning to see (and hopefully will be done) in the Canary Islands.

Here I leave you with some measures proposed by BBC Wildlife to mitigate these effects https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/how-can-i-stop-my-cat-hunting-wildlife/ , although the only 100% effective solution is to keep the animal in the house and walk them out in a controlled way (with a harness) as with dogs. I have seen this in cities, and just as in large urban areas it is done to avoid anything happening to the cat, it should be done anywhere so that the cat does not kill anything.

Take care of our pets, take care of our native fauna. It is our duty.

Interest sources:

Hunting roles in lions: Stander, P. E. (1992). Cooperative hunting in lions: the role of the individual. Behavioral ecology and sociobiology, 29(6), 445-454. http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2011_09.dir/pdfeL5GzNL2FL.pdf

Papers about domestic cats hunting:

Loyd, K. A. T., Hernandez, S. M., Carroll, J. P., Abernathy, K. J., & Marshall, G. J. (2013). Quantifying free-roaming domestic cat predation using animal-borne video cameras. Biological Conservation, 160, 183-189. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1656&context=natrespapers

McGregor, H., Legge, S., Jones, M. E., & Johnson, C. N. (2015). Feral cats are better killers in open habitats, revealed by animal-borne video. PloS one, 10(8), e0133915. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0133915

Crowley, S. L., Cecchetti, M., & McDonald, R. A. (2019). Hunting behaviour in domestic cats: An exploratory study of risk and responsibility among cat owners. People and Nature, 1(1), 18-30. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/pan3.6

Calver, M., Thomas, S., Bradley, S., & McCutcheon, H. (2007). Reducing the rate of predation on wildlife by pet cats: The efficacy and practicability of collar-mounted pounce protectors. Biological Conservation, 137(3), 341-348. https://www.catbib.com.au/science