IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Caro, T.M. | |
| Determinants of asociality in felids | |
| 1989 Book Chapter | |
Despite a number of benefits that could accrue from living in groups, adult members of most felid species live alone, which suggests that there are considerable costs to living together for members of this family. The reasons why male felids of most species live alone, but why male cheetahs and lions live in groups are first discussed. I then address the more problematic question of why the great majority of adult female cats do not live together. The idea that females actually live alone for most of their lives is dismissed. Using data from free-living cheetahs, it is shown that their companions (dependent cubs) consume a large share of the food that females acquire, but help their mothers little in catching prey. Data are presented on the time that cheetah mothers spend hunting with litters of different sizes. They show that the amount of extra time necessary to sustain members of a social group would be prohibitively high. For cheetahs, hunting larger prey in order to feed group members would be no more profitable than hunting smaller prey because of the difficulties in capturing large prey items. Then data from males are presented to show that increasing group size does not result in significant increases in hunting success. These results suggest that in becoming social, cheetah mothers would have to spend too much time hunting unless there were sufficient numbers of large or vulnerable prey in the habitat. The implications of these findings are then extended to other species of felid. Prey larger than that normally taken by females, necessary to sustain two families living together, is relatively scarce in nearly all the habitats that have been studied. The review suggests that conditions necessary for sociality to evolve are absent for virtually all extant felids. |
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