Living Small
Dividing the cat species into small, medium, and large seems more like describing pizza than doing science. But this simple categorization actually reflects meaningful differences among the felids in what and how often they hunt and kill.
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| Lions are big cats. |
Lions are notoriously lazy. Lions, along with tigers, are the large cats, typically weighing between about 300 and 400 pounds. They rest 19 or 20 hours a day when prey is abundant and, even when it's not, 14 hours of rest a day is the norm. Domestic cats, which fall in the small category, are pretty indolent too. But pampered, well-fed house cats are not typical of their wild, small-size cousins. Fifteen- to 30-pound ocelots, for instance, actively hunt for small rodents 12 to 14 hours a day. And while a lion takes about 30 zebra, wildebeest, and similar large prey a year, and a tiger about 50 hefty sambar deer and wild pigs, a 17- to 40-pound serval captures about 6,000 small rodents, snakes, and birds in a year!
Tigers and lions hunt large animals, often larger than themselves, and they have no choice. While they might occasionally snatch up smaller creatures like hares and such, tigers and lions can't survive on such diminutive fare—over the long term, it takes more energy to catch enough of such morsels to feed large bodies than they're worth.
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| Cheetahs are medium-size cats. |
The medium-size cats, weighing between about 90 and 175 pounds, are jaguars, leopards, snow leopards, pumas, and cheetahs. Except for the lightly built cheetah, these cats prefer and are strong enough to take large prey when it's available, but can make do with smaller stuff. A puma, for instance, thrives on elk and deer but can meet its needs with rabbits, hares, and ground squirrels when bigger packages of protein are scarce. And large prey for a leopard is proportionately smaller than large prey for a tiger: Leopards are about a fourth the size of tigers and so are their prey. Among these cats, activity levels and kills per year vary accordingly.
In contrast, small cats, those less than about 45 pounds, rely almost entirely on prey smaller than themselves, primarily hares and rabbits, rodents, and birds. With a few exceptions, the small cats don't seem to be powerful enough to bring down bigger creatures. And this gives them little time for lolling around between meals. In fact, smaller cats must eat proportionately more than larger cats. On average, big cats consume about half an ounce per day per pound of their body weight, medium-size cats such as pumas just under an ounce per day per pound, and ocelot-size small cats one to one-and-a-half ounces.
The very small "microcats," such as black-footed cats, rusty-spotted cats, and kodkod, which weigh from two to six pounds, have huge appetites, consuming two to two-and-a-half ounces per day per pound of body weight. Compared to lazy lions and even to busy ocelots, these tiny cats are dynamos. Hunting is an all-consuming task, and what little is known of the diets of these cats suggests they eat just about anything that moves and is smaller than they are.
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| Domestic cats are small cats. |
Small cats differ from the large and medium-size cats in another important way, too. While adult large and medium cats have no or few predators and competitors, small cats have plenty of both! Small cats compete with predatory birds, some snakes, and weasels for rodent and bird prey, and may also be eaten by snakes and birds of prey, as well as killed by cats of larger species when their ranges overlap. So while all cats tend to be secretive, the small cats are especially so—one big reason why many people aren't even aware these feisty little felines exist.
—Susan Lumpkin
ZooGoer 3(2) 2007. Copyright 2007 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.
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