Drivers and facilitators of hunting behaviour in domestic cats and options for management

Abstract

Domestic cats Felis catus are distinct from other domesticated animals because their phenotype and genotype are relatively unchanged. While they live with people as pets or pest controllers, they retain capacity for survival independent of human support and readily persist as feral animals. Most cats retain some propensity to express hunting behaviours, even if hunting is not required for nutrition. In some settings, depredation by cats is a threat to biodiversity conservation, leading to attempts to mitigate their impacts. We characterise drivers and facilitators of the hunting behaviour of domestic cats: evolutionary origins, diet, life history, personality and environment. Hunting is driven particularly by evolutionary constraints and associated physiological and nutritional requirements. Proximate causes of variation in hunting behaviours relate to prey availability, husbandry and degree of domestication, while early life history and personality play further roles. We review cat management approaches in terms of effectiveness, feasibility and welfare. Amongst lethal, large-scale methods of population control, poisoning is most frequently used in cat eradications from islands. Because poisoning is challenged on welfare grounds, euthanasia is used at smaller scales and in inhabited, mainland settings. Non-lethal approaches, primarily surgical sterilisation, are favoured by cat advocates but entail challenging logistics and scale. In attempts to inhibit predation of wild species by pet cats, owners restrict outdoor access and use collar-mounted devices, including bells, sonic devices, collar covers and bibs. Other individual-level interventions, such as dietary and behavioural enrichment, some of which may improve cat welfare, have potential, but effects on hunting remain untested. Understanding and managing the hunting behaviour of cats are complex challenges. We highlight drivers and facilitators of this behaviour, representing starting points for formulating solutions that might be acceptable to cat owners and wider groups of people who value cat welfare, while also being effective for wildlife conservation.