Your Cat’s Hunting Technique: Do You Know What It Is?
Cats, like all felines, are excellent hunters. Probably all owners are amazed at their kittens’ ability to chase their prey. But you, like many others, may not know your cat’s hunting technique.
Your Cat’s Hunting Technique: Why Do They Keep Hunting?
Despite having learned to live harmoniously with humans, cats have not been fully domesticated.
Indeed, there are those who argue that cats have domesticated themselves; that is, they allowed themselves to adapt to a domestic routine to benefit from it in different ways.
Discussions and controversies aside, the truth is that our kitten still maintains certain habits and behaviors worthy of a wild cat.
One of the biggest proofs of this is his powerful hunting instinct. Although they live in a very comfortable house, almost all cats continue to chase their prey and exercise their skills as expert hunters.
This is an innate need for cats that goes back to their wild origins and ancestors.
How do cats hunt in the wild?
In nature, we can see that animals perform different hunting methods to capture their prey and feed. Cats stand out as excellent strategists.
They plan each step until they reach their prey, optimizing their energy expenditure and ensuring an effective attack.
Although some cats can hunt in groups (such as lions), most maintain a solitary life; except when they go to mate, however, they hunt alone.
Discover your cat’s amazing hunting technique
Despite their small size compared to wild cats, cats also have the physical and mental attributes of a great hunter.
Your body provides all the tools: well-developed muscles, great flexibility, very heightened senses, powerful claws, and a strong jaw.
If we stop to watch our pussies, we’ll see how attentive they are to every movement of possible prey, whether it’s an insect or a bird they see through the window.
But in reality, everything is a crucial part of your cat’s hunting technique: devising a strategy for hunting your prey.
When they judge that the time is right to launch the attack, the cat acts with confidence, using its strength and flexibility to reach its prey.
Your cat’s amazing ‘surprise weapon’ to hunt
Some recent studies carried out by the AN Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow, Russia, have revealed that cats also use a “secret weapon” to increase the effectiveness of their hunting. And this powerful ‘weapon’ is simply found in your urine.
Normally, a mouse that smells cat urine tends to escape immediately. This is because rodents have neurons sensitive to some substances present in the cat’s urine; especially the feline.
Quickly, the rodent’s nervous system responds to this stimulus, which causes an increase in the levels of the so-called “stress hormone”. Thanks to this, the animal can react and escape to avoid an encounter with a predator.
It has been observed that rats that have been exposed to cat urine from an early age have a lesser tendency to avoid or escape its odor when they are adults.
In other words, their response is much calmer than that of rats that were not exposed to these substances.
According to these physiological characteristics, cat urine can act as a “secret weapon”; which increases the cat’s advantage over the mouse in a chase.
Does your cat bring you dead animals?
Many “gatekeepers” have been surprised with some “gift” brought by their cats.
This peculiar cat habit of bringing dead animals to their owners is linked to their behavior in a familial or feline group.
Adult cats, especially females, should guide the young to learn to hunt on their own. Until they are ready to reach their own prey, adults are responsible for bringing them food and keeping them well nourished to survive.
Our pussies don’t take long to realize that humans aren’t exactly good hunters and we’d be in serious trouble if we had to hunt our own prey.
Therefore, as a show of affection or care, they offer us their prey so that we remain healthy and well nourished.
