Abstract
Prey killing behaviours in juvenile wild cats are subject to most influence by their mothers and siblings. The learning strategies enable an individual to create opportunities for conspecifics to participate in operant conditioning. We present for the first time video recordings of two southern tigrinas learning to capture and kill a live cavy (Cavia aff. aperea). The videos demonstrate release and recapture of the prey multiple times, likely as practise for development of hunting skills. Predation skills are particularly important for survival during adverse conditions such as low prey population densities, which commonly occur for some time after young cats become independent. In addition to providing the first description of the learning of predation behaviours in this species, our results offer general information on the ecology of Leopardus guttulus, a species recently recognised as distinct.
Acknowledgements
JAB thanks CAPES for a PhD scholarship. NP thanks CNPq for a productivity fellowship. We thank Jorge José Cherem for considerations and suggestions, Alexandre Marcel da Silva Machado for helping to edit the videos, and Patricia Puechagut, Isabela B. Fogaça and Rafael B. Suhs for field support. We thank Thiago C. Gomes for helping to review the English. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their important contributions and suggestions.
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