Anyone who has lived with two or more house cats might think it’s ironic, how these famously independent little hunters somehow manage to get along.
From arched backs, hisses, and growls all the way through to mutual grooming, house cats have social protocols that appear to be as complex as any that a human diplomat would follow at an international meeting.
This is not by accident.
Species survival depends on keeping bloodshed to a minimum whenever two well-armed natural killers meet.
“The rules,” which cats know far better than those of us outside Family Felidae can understand, reduce injuries and also enable the cats — who really are solitary most of the time — find mates.
After all, surviving long enough to pass along your genes is what natural selection is all about.
Domestication has complicated the picture for Fluffy. How does this instinctive behavior work in the wild?
Scientists are still studying it, but here are some ways that the world’s wild cats coexist:
28. They avoid each other and go after different prey.
It isn’t exactly “share and share alike” for predators on the Serengeti.
Most of us assume (correctly) that the cats there work out a balance, but how?
Wildlife biologists need to understand this better so they can help the animals avoid extinction.
From an ecological perspective, when cats compete for a limited resource (prey), they all have the same three basic options:
- Eliminate the competition.
- Find a unique way to exploit the resource.
- If Numbers 1 and 2 fail, go extinct.
All living beings on Earth today are those whose ancestors succeeded in either of the first two options.
There is no safety net and Dr. Wikipedia estimates that 99% of all species that have ever existed are extinct.
Here is some comfort food for the eye to counterbalance that grim fact.
Among Serengeti denizens, lions are very good at Option #1, sadly. They see to it that very few of the cheetah cubs born there ever make it to adulthood.
But enough youngsters do survive to maintain the Serengeti’s cheetah population.
Adult cheetahs usually can take care of themselves, being fast enough to not only outrun lions but also to catch speedy prey that might escape the pride.
However, lightweight cheetahs can’t beat even a single lion in a fight, let alone a pride or a pack of other Serengeti carnivores.
The cheetahs, therefore, use another option (#2a. Avoidance) and hunt later in the morning and early in the afternoon, when the pride is dozing (there are fewer kleptomaniac competitors like hyenas and jackals around, too!).
Option #2b — Strength in numbers — is also a possibility. Young cheetahs that make it to adulthood often do so in a coalition, improving their chances of hunting success as well as survival during a lion encounter.
This five-member coalition, filmed three years ago, was unusually large. That day, perhaps, the cats found such a heavy tourist presence distracting? Lucky zebra!
It’s harder for conservationists to see how the Serengeti’s other large spotted cat manages to live there.
Yes, leopards use trees and rock piles to escape danger and to enjoy their meal in peace, but portion size apparently matters, too.
On the Serengeti, both big cats go after kudus (spiral-horned antelope). As you might expect, lions take the bigger ones and leopards focus on smaller kudus.
Leopards can bring down larger animals but they don’t.
Researchers in South Africa suggest that this is because smaller carcasses are easier to hang onto when lions and other scavengers are drawn to the kill — as long as there’s a tree nearby to haul one up into.
What about small cats?
The Serengeti’s African wildcats stay out of the big cats’ way and concentrate on keeping down the plain’s rodent population.
Avoidance is how small cats coexist with larger felines.
Except when love is in the air…
When there are two small cats around — say, wildcats and black-footed cats in southern Africa — they hunt different prey species, and the smaller species (the black-footed cat) avoids the other.
Let’s keep things big in this post with lions and tigers and leopards, oh my!
29. Big cats: Leopards usually play second fiddle to lions and tigers but do rule Africa’s rainforest.
Asiatic lions exist only in one small region of India, but there are Asian tigers and leopards in various places.
And tigers can climb trees.
Without that escape option, Asian leopards use avoidance, hunting when tigers are either resting or off in some other area.
Leopards and tigers share all Asian habitats, including rainforest, but leopards work their surroundings differently, again reducing competition with tigers.
In western and central Africa’s rainforest, though, it’s a different story.
Cheetahs can’t run here, so they stay out on the plain. So do lions, whose pride society might have evolved to meet savanna conditions (this is still under debate).
Leopards, the remaining African big cats, have that continent’s rainforest all to themselves.
Including this melanistic mom and her spotted cub in Kenya.
Here, it’s the small African golden cat that must practice avoidance and hunt smaller species than the leopard does.
Rainforest leopards in Africa are lucky. In the American tropics, the resident big cat — a leopard doppelganger — has to contend with competition almost its same size!
30. Jaguars and mountain lions coexist — somehow.
Though not when a cub is present.
Jaguars are very much like leopards. Sometimes the only way to tell these two big cats apart in images is by the dark furry spot in the center of a jaguar’s rosette.
If you see them in person at a zoo, a jaguar is brawny and powerful, built like a wrestler; the leopard usually is sleek and supple, like a baseball player.
Out in the wild, you probably won’t see either one. Both cats, along with mountain lions, are ninja masters when it comes to avoiding us.
This elusiveness frustrates conservationists who want to understand how jaguars and mountain lions manage to get along throughout their range.
It’s odd that the two American cats do coexist, because:
- They are about the same size.
- They share the same habitats (which can be anything from Brazil’s Caatinga thornbrush to northern Mexico’s Sonoran desert, as well as the lush tropical forests of Central and South America).
- Jaguars and mountain lions are active at the same time of day.
- In general, the two cats hunt the same prey.
In short, all the “rules” that allow leopards and lions to coexist in Africa seemingly go out the window when America’s leopard-like and lion-like cats interact.
They must interact somehow, but apart from anecdotal evidence such as some comments to that Wild Kingdom video (and the work of lucky photographers who recorded the amazing encounter), scientists are having a hard time observing it.
Boffins tried setting up trail cameras in Belize — the jaguars apparently preferred to muscle their way cross-country while mountain lions kept to the path.
However, the study was limited. It wasn’t possible to identify and track individual mountain lions, because their tawny coats and similar facial markings all look alike.
Maybe jaguars and mountain lions avoid each other, but is it mutual or is one of them subordinate (the way leopards are subordinate to tigers)?
Maybe prey abundance, instead of social interaction, influences where jaguars and mountain lions live.
But the two cats usually occur in the same places throughout their extensive range, which is home to many different prey populations.
Leave it to the cat family to show us humans that the only Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule (except for the secret ones that every member of Family Felidae is born knowing)!
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Sources include:
Macdonald, D. W., and Loveridge, A. J. (Eds.). 2010. The Biology and Conservation of Wild Felids. Oxford University Press. http://www.www.temperaterainforests.net/documents/murphymacdonald2010.pdf (PDF download)
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Flight To Wonder 