How much does a jaguarundi eat?

X (Twitter) Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn Email

The jaguarundi eats about 105 grams of food per day on average. This is 3.7 ounces.

Neither my books nor the Internet tells me in terms of weight how much a jaguarundi eats per day but we can work it out. The jaguarundi is a similar size to the domestic cat. It’s a bit larger, in fact. They weigh between 3.75 kg and 7 kg. The domestic cat weighs between 3.6 kg 4.5 kg but of course there are some exceptional cats who are much larger.

Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

On my estimation the jaguarundi is about 20% larger in terms of weight than the average adult, healthy, middle-aged domestic cat. The adult domestic cat of average size (about 5 kg) eats about 70 g of food per day. If they are senior cats that goes down to 55 g and indeed if they are neutered it also goes down to 55 g. I think for the sake of this discussion we will take the 70 g figure because we are comparing a domestic cat in the unneutered state i.e. natural state compared to a small wild cat species, the jaguarundi.

So we can multiply 70 g by 1.2 (20% equates to 0.2), which gives us 84 g of food a day that the jaguarundi needs to eat to survive on straight comparison but as the jaguarundi is far more active than a domestic cat and more hyped up, I’d estimate that they eat 1.5 times the weight of food. This means the jaguarundi eats 105 grams of food per day.

That’s my calculation working backwards from a domestic cat. This small wild cat species is believed to feed primarily on small prey of less than 1 kg in weight which in terms of prey animals is mainly rodents, birds and reptiles but sometimes they will attack and kill larger animals such as rabbits, opossums and armadillos. The domestic cat also will attack a rabbit sometimes and also the domestic cat’s primary prey are mice, reptiles and birds which mirrors the diet of the jaguarundi.