{"id":2185373,"date":"2025-01-27T18:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T17:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=2185373"},"modified":"2025-01-25T08:42:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T07:42:49","slug":"do-cheetahs-scavenge-yes-research-says-but-also-not-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/do-cheetahs-scavenge-yes-research-says-but-also-not-really\/","title":{"rendered":"Do cheetahs scavenge? Yes, research says, but also not really"},"content":{"rendered":"

NAIROBI \u2014 Cheetahs are known to be selective in their feeding habits \u2014 \u201cclean eaters\u201d that only go after the prime parts of their kill, such as the liver. But a new study has found that the large, slender, spotted cat found in Africa and parts of Western Asia can also scavenge.<\/p>\n

Unlike other African predators, cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) rarely search for and collect remains they did not kill themselves, but the study published this month in the journal Ecology and Evolution observed cheetahs scavenging between 2019 and 2023 in three different protected areas: Tswalu Kalahari Reserve and Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa, and Liwonde National Park in Malawi.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe observations made in this paper were very interesting to us and show that there could be potential for further studies into it,\u201d said lead author Elizabeth Kennedy Overton, a researcher at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Cheetahs were previously thought not to scavenge, with few reports in the scientific literature of them doing so, according to the researchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted just to say, look it does happen and it would be interesting to find out the reasons behind it,\u201d added Overton, who currently is doing a Ph.D. on cheetahs in the Kalahari.<\/p>\n

According to the study, all the adult cheetahs observed scavenging were animals that had previously been relocated from different areas. During the relocation process, they were temporarily put in holding enclosures known as bomas, where they were provided with supplementary feed in the form of carrion.<\/p>\n

One of these cheetahs was a female that was relocated to Liwonde from Mountain Zebra National Park in South Africa. At Liwonde, researchers observed her and her two sub-adult cubs approaching a group of eight cheetahs \u2014 one adult female, her five sub-adult cubs, and two adult males \u2014 that had killed a kudu and were eating it. Once the group moved off the kill, the relocated mother and her cubs descended on the carcass and ate what was left.<\/p>\n

Scavenging episodes like this could be explained by the easy access to food in a situation where food acquisition is potentially difficult due to \u201cold age, loss of hunting partners, or offspring in the case of a mother with cubs,\u201d the researchers note.<\/p>\n

\"A
A close-up image of a cheetah in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. Image by Rhett A. Butler \/ Mongabay.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dennis Minja, a biodiversity researcher focusing on the influence of human-induced pressures on cheetah hunting and habitat in the Serengeti ecosystem of Tanzania, said the findings may be questionable since only three observations were reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be interesting if [there were] more observations, potentially gathered from other long-term cheetah monitoring programmes,\u201d said Minja who is also a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne intriguing point I picked up was that cheetahs might perceive a sense of safety when scavenging on kills made by their kind,\u201d added Minja, who wasn\u2019t involved in the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe familiar scent of other cheetahs could potentially make them feel more at ease, reducing the perceived risk compared to scavenging on kills made by other carnivores.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that in the Serengeti, cheetahs occasionally join other cheetahs at kills, \u201cmore often than we have seen them scavenging from dead carrion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bettina Wachter, senior scientist in the Department for Evolutionary Ecology at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, said the cheetahs observed scavenging were either old, with offspring, or in an area with many competitors, which might have put them under energetic pressure, thus they decided to take the risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf cheetahs under energetic pressure accept carcasses to feed from, even though not readily, this can have effects on the prey population and interspecific competition,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I would asses these effects as small as I assume cheetahs will only scavenge in rare occasions,\u201d added Wachter, who wasn\u2019t involved in the study.<\/p>\n

The study does not explain the cheetahs\u2019 behavior and only suggests hypothetical causes and impacts. However, the researchers are calling for further investigations into this feeding behavior.<\/p>\n

Citations:<\/h2>\n

Overton, E. K., Davis, R. S., Prugnolle, F., Rougeron, V., Honiball, T., Sievert, O., & Venter, J. A. (2025). Carrion in bomas: Multiple observations of cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) scavenging events and potential causes in managed populations. Ecology and Evolution, 15(1). doi:10.1002\/ece3.70776<\/p>\n

This article<\/a> by Dann Okoth was first published by Mongabay.com on 24 January 2025. Lead Image: A close-up image of a cheetah in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. Image by Rhett A. Butler \/ Mongabay.<\/i><\/p>\n

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