nt on their hunting skills, that fewer instances of this behavior will be observed indomestic cats than in feral cats.Domestic cats, in some cases, will hunt even though they do not need food. Household pets are commonly observed stalking bugs and other small creatures that arefound in their immediate environment. In some areas, domestic cats are considered athreat to indigenous wildlife (Liberg, 1984). A study was conducted by Liberg (1984) todetermine what foods house cats in Sweden regularly consumed. It was found that eventhough all the cats in the sample were regularly fed by their human owners, they stillcontinued to hunt during all seasons. During the year when the cats were studied, bothhouse cats and feral cats were found to have killed similar numbers of animals. While onewould expect that feral cats would have hunted and killed other animals for food muchmore often than house cats did, the difference was surprisingly small. The fact that catswill hunt even when there is food available also suggests that many of the behaviorsassociated with hunting and killing prey are genetically determined, and can be passed on. A study by Adamec (1976) examined the relationship between hunting in cats andhunger. In that study it was found that domestic cats will stop eating a meal ofcommercially produced cat food in order to kill a rat. After they kill the rat, they bring itback to the bowl of food they were eating, and then continue to eat the cat food. Theseresults show that hunting behavior and eating are not necessarily related to one another. Itseems that hunting and killing prey is a behavior that is not related to the animalsimmediate need for food.It is difficult to directly observe cats hunting prey. However, components of thebehavior can be easily observed in domestic cats. The head shaking behavior of cats canbe observed even when the cat is eating commercially manufactured cat food. Thisbehavior persists even thoug...
