A small cat saving food for later: caching behavior in the European wildcat ( Felis silvestris silvestris )
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A small cat saving food for later: caching behavior in the European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris) Héctor Ruiz-Villar 1
&
José Vicente López-Bao 1 & Francisco Palomares 2
Received: 17 April 2020 / Revised: 26 July 2020 / Accepted: 17 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Caching behavior consists on the relocation or storage of food to protect it from competitors, to delay food spoilage, or to exploit it during times of scarcity. While this behavior has been widely described for some medium and large-sized felids, only a few cases documented caching behavior in small felids. Here, we provide the first exhaustive description of a caching event on a European wildcat in the Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain). The wildcat behaved like a lynx/puma, visiting a road-killed roe deer carcass at least 9 days along a 21-day period, consuming the main muscles and covering it with hair and vegetation. Keywords Caching behavior . Carnivore . Felidae . European wildcat . Felis silvestris
Introduction Caching behavior consists on the relocation and/or storage of food to create a predictable food resource to exploit during times of scarcity (Vander Wall 1990), protect it from competitors (Stein et al. 2015), and delay its spoilage (BischoffMattson and Mattson 2009). Caching is well studied for several taxa, such as seed-eating species like corvids or rodents (Vander Wall 1990). Regarding mammalian carnivores, caching of prey has been documented, both when hunting prey and scavenging, for several families including felids, (Bauer et al. 2005; Bischoff-Mattson and Mattson 2009). Felids display caching behavior in multiple ways. Although leopards (Panthera pardus) can cache their prey into caves (Ruiter and Berger 2001), they more commonly carry prey up to trees to reduce the risk of kleptoparasitism from not-climbing Vicente López-Bao and Francisco Palomares shared senior authorship Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-020-01413-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Héctor Ruiz-Villar [email protected] 1
Research Unit of Biodiversity (UMIB, CSIC-UO-PA), Oviedo University, Campus Mieres, 33600 Mieres, Spain
2
Department of Conservation Biology, Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC), Avd. Americo Vespucio 26, 41092 Sevilla, Spain
competitors (Balme et al. 2017). The same behavior has occasionally been documented for European lynxes (Lynx lynx) (Červený and Okarma 2002) and caracals (Caracal caracal) (Mills 1997). Jaguars (Panthera onca) and tigers (Panthera tigris) drag their prey to areas under vegetation to periodically feed upon the remains (Karanth and Sunquist 2000; de Azevedo and Murray 2007). All lynx species (L. lynx (Podgórski et al. 2008); L. rufus (Labisky and Boulay 1998); L. canadiensis (O’Donoghue et al. 1998), L. pardinus (Delibes 1980), pumas (Puma concolor) (Bischoff-Mattson and Mattson 2009), and rarely leopards (Karanth and S
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