If you search the Internet for an answer to the question in the title, be prepared to be misled. I will explain what I mean. People expect to find a specific percentage, a definitive answer to the question. You won’t find one. I am convinced of it. I have spent a good 30 minutes or more searching for an answer. I have come up with one definitive but small sample study which was conducted in Australia. Although another website did refer to a study on the hunting success rate of feral cats in the USA but I am unsure of its reliability, which I will mention below.
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Australia
The Australian study observed 101 hunting events from 89 hours of video footage from camcorders attached to the cats. I don’t know exactly in which part of Australia the study took place. That might be important.
The initial very important point to make is that this is one study of a small group of feral cats. You simply CANNOT extrapolate (extend) this information to cover all feral cats on the planet or across Australia.
But this is what the leading article as found by Google professes to do. In fact, they’ve compounded the problem by referring to domestic cats when this particular study upon which they relied is about feral cats.
The study is called: “Feral Cats Are Better Killers in Open Habitats, Revealed by Animal-Borne Video”. They concluded that feral cats were successful in 32 of the hunts out of the 101 observed. That of course is an approximate 32% success rate.
They found that the quality of the habitat dictated success rate. When the habitat was “dense grass or complex rocks there was a 17% success rate. When it was open areas the success rate climbed to 70%. So, the scientists averaged or found a mean success rate.
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New York
The website WKIVET discusses feline predatory behaviour. They refer to an observational study of cat predatory behaviour in a suburban nature reserve. They are referring to feral cats because their reference source is about TNR of feral cats.
In fact, it is called: “Jongman, E. C., Karlen, G.A. (1996) Trap, neuter and release programs for cats: a literature review on an alternative control method of feral cats in urban areas. Pp. 81-84, In: S. Hassett (ed.), Urban Animal Management Conference. Australian Veterinary Association, Ltd.”
The conclusion in this study is that there was a hunting success rate of 13%. Therefore, in this small study that took place in America in New York City, feral cats had a hunting success rate of 13%. This is clearly considerably lower than the Australian feral cats in that small study.
Different results from different places
What does that tell us? It tells us that you will get different answers to the question in the title from different studies which reinforces the point I made above that you can’t extrapolate one study and say that it provides a definitive answer for all feral cats.
This is one of the great problems of the Internet. Too many people are taking a small sample size in one study and claiming that the results of that study applies to the world’s cat population. Or it applies to a countrywide population of feral or domestic cats. It doesn’t.
Conclusion
Based on these two studies, the feral cat has a reasonably good success rate when hunting. By comparison, it might be worth noting that the cat species with the best hunting success rate is the black-footed cat. This is a small wild cat species with black paw pads which looks a bit like a domestic cat but is smaller. They are incredibly active hunters at night and they have a 60% hunting success rate. This puts the black-footed cat in the very top bracket of successful predators on the planet.
There are more successful predators (the dragon fly) but this little tabby wild cat is up there with the best.
The other conclusion that I must make and which I’ve made twice already is that you must expect to be misled by the Internet on the hunting success rate of feral cats. Please don’t take what you read on face value. Please don’t quote it in some essay or article that you are writing without qualifying it. Please do what I’m doing and question it. Do your own research.
If you can find a better answer than I have found then please be kind enough to leave me a comment and I will integrate it into this article.
