Individual hunting behaviour and prey specialisation in the house cat Felis catus: Implications for conservation and management
By Chris R. Dickman, T. Newsome. 2015
108 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract Predators are often classed as prey specialists if they eat a narrow range of prey types, or as generalists if they hunt multiple prey types. Yet, individual predators often exhibit sex, size, age or personality-related differences in their diets that may alter the impacts of predation on different prey groups. In this study, we asked whether the house cat Felis catus shows individuality and specialisation in its hunting behaviour and discuss the implications of such specialisation for prey conservation and management. We first examined the prey types killed by cats using information obtained from cat owners, and then presented data on cat hunting efficiency on different prey types from direct observations. Finally, we quantified dietary shifts in cats when densities of their preferred prey varied. Twenty-six cats that returned 10 or more prey items to their owners showed marked differences in prey preferences (P
Subfields: Ecology, Small Animals
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/32964b6091d608fc401f9bca4792e01081597707
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Citations in the corpus
- How many birds are killed by cats in Australia (2017, background): “There may also be substantial differences in the hunting behaviour and prey selectivity among individual co-occurring cats, with some individual cats preferentially targeting birds (Dickman and Newsome, 2015; Molsher et al., 1999), and some differences in diet”
- Introduced cats (Felis catus) eating a continental fauna: The number of mammals killed in Australia (2019, background): “There may also be substantial differences in the hunting behaviour and 97 prey selectivity among individual co-occurring cats (Dickman and Newsome 2015; Molsher et al. 98 1999) and some differences in diet associated with size of individual cats (Kutt 2012; Moseby et al. 99 2015; Yip et al. 2014).”
- Catastrophic cat predation: A call for predator profiling in wildlife protection programs (2015, background): “Differences in diet could be caused by variations in the sex, age, size or personality of individuals (Brickner et al., 2014; Dickman and Newsome, 2015).”