Felines are the most specialized living carnivores (Kitchener, 1991). Most felines stalk their prey, while cheetahs chase their prey at high rates of speed and lions cooperate to capture their prey (Kitchener, 1991). Cats mostly use sight and sound to capture their prey and catch most of their prey by opportunity (Kitchener, 1991). Some cats cache, or hide their food for later, but cheetahs do not because they cannot defend it, but they also have a high hunting success rate that they do not need to cache their prey (Hayward et al., 2006; Kitchener, 1991; Marker et al., 2003; Marker et al., 2018; Schaller, 1972).
Tigers can stalk their prey for 20 to 30 minutes and can eat about 88 pounds of food in one sitting, leading to a kill about once a week (SDZG, 2020; SWT, 2020). Female lions do about 85%-90% of the hunting (AWF Lion, 2020).
Leopards are the strongest climbers of all the big cats, which benefits them when they hide their prey from larger carnivores like lions and tigers (AWF Leopard, 2020). They also have the broadest and most diverse diet of all large predators, having around 92 to over 100 prey species (Hayward, 2006; Panthera Leopard, 2020). Leopards eat between 1.6 and 4.9 kilograms of meat per day which balances out to about 40 prey items a year (Hayward, 2006). Leopards are solitary hunters and they stalk and close in on their prey (Turner, 1997). Group hunting, like how lions hunt, would provide no benefit due to the fact that once detected there is very little chance of the leopard capturing its prey (Hayward, 2006).
Jaguars are very opportunistic stalk and ambush hunters that have over 85 different prey species (SDZG Jaguar, 2020). The jaguar has the most powerful bite out of all the big cats (Wilber, 2020; WWF Top 10 Facts, 2020). Pumas can eat up to 20 pounds of meat at a time and usually stay with their prey or carcass for about three days (Williams, 2018). Prey loss affects all the big cats but mainly the snow leopard because they live in an area where there is low productivity of prey options (SLT The Threats, 2020; Wolf & Ripple, 2016).
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