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6 FOOD CHOICE and FEEDING HABITS of the FLAT-HEADED CAT (PRIONAILURUS PLANICEPS) in CAPTIVITY.Indd

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6 FOOD CHOICE and FEEDING HABITS of the FLAT-HEADED CAT (PRIONAILURUS PLANICEPS) in CAPTIVITY.Indd Journal of Wildlife and Parks (2014) 29 : 37-44 37 FOOD CHOICE AND FEEDING HABITS OF THE FLAT-HEADED CAT (Prionailurus planiceps) IN CAPTIVITY John Rasmussen* Institute of Biology, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark *Corresponding author: [email protected] ABSTRACT The flat-headed cat, Prionailurus planiceps, is a small Asian felid, whose ecology is not very well documented. This study aimed to uncover the food choice and feeding habits of P. planiceps in captivity. Two P. planiceps living in a small enclosure in Peninsular Malaysia were fed different types of food including fish, frogs and birds, to see which ones they prefer. They were also tested to see if they prefer living prey or dead food items. It was noted where the prey was consumed, how much was consumed and whether or not the cats would “play” with the living prey before eating it. Results indicate that P. planiceps is an opportunist and will take food in, or close to water, especially fish. It seems that P. planiceps prefers living prey over dead food items. Most food was consumed less than 1 meter from the water, however this may be only a matter of the behavior of P. planiceps in captivity. P. planiceps would always play with the living prey before consuming it. Nothing conclusive could be said about the degree of fish consumption, as the head of the fish was left uneaten in roughly half of the feeding events. Keywords: Behavior, Dead food item, Ecology, Enclosure, Fish consumption, Living prey INTRODUCTION The family Felidae comprises all living cat species of the world. Today there are approximately 37 species of Felidae, of which almost half are considered threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 2011). The flat-headed cat, Prionailurus planiceps, is an endangered cat species native to Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra (Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002; Esabii, 2011). Adults range in size between 446-521 mm, with a tail length between 128-169 mm, and its weight is approximately 1.6 kg (Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002). The head is longer compared to other Malaysian cats, and the sheaths of the claws are reduced. The eye placement of flat-headed cats is more anterior in the head in comparison to other cats. The second upper premolar is relatively larger, however, the upper molars are smaller in comparison to the leopard cat, P. bengalensis. The flat-headed cat has short legs, tail and ears, and its color is brownish, with a white underbelly (Muul & Lim, 1970). The cats' mouth has evolved to become better at seizing wet and slippery prey compared to the fishing cat,P. viverrinus, and it probably has greater biting power (Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002). In the wild, few studies have been done on the ecology of the flat-headed cat, and much less on the natural diet of the species. Flat-headed cats in the wild will probably hunt for fish and they seem to feed on a range of food types. The stomach contents of a dead P. planiceps contained flesh and some fish vertebrae (Muul & Lim, 1970). P. planiceps will also hunt for frogs and crustaceans (Salakij et al., 2008), and has also been observed killing and eating small rodents (Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002). 38 John Rasmussen When a kitten was presented with live sparrows, it would completely ignore this type of food (Muul & Lim, 1970). However, a captive adult P. planiceps caught and consumed live quail (B. Simpson pers. comm.). P. planiceps has even been said to prefer fruit (Anderson & Jones, 1984). A kitten studied in captivity would enter water when looking for food and grab pieces of fish, by completely submerging its head and grabbing the desired piece. It would also “wash” its food in the water, almost like a raccoon (Procyon lotor). After the kitten had collected a piece of food, it would drag the food at least 2 meters away from the water before consumption. The kitten captured live frogs by snarling and jumping upon them while grabbing them (Muul & Lim, 1970). Currently only 12 flat- headed cats are kept in captivity in Thailand (Thongphakdee et al., 2009), and fewer still in Malaysia. In 2002, less than 20 specimens had been collected from the wild (Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002). The purpose of this study was to investigate the food choice and feeding behavior of flat-headed cats in captivity. The following aspects of the cats’ food choice and feeding behavior were examined: 1. What food items did the cats prefer? 2. Did the cats prefer living or dead food? 3. Where would the cats eat the food? METHODOLOGY Study site and experimental animals One pair of flat-headed cats (an adult male and female) were kept in a 77 m2 enclosure (Figure 1), located at Sungai Dusun Wildlife Reserve, Selangor, Malaysia, which is located in an almost undisturbed peat forest area. The area is under the supervision of the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP), Malaysia. The enclosure contains 2 small pools (roughly 10 cm deep) and 2 small streams (water to the streams was turned off during the whole investigation), a hollow log and a few artificial platforms on which the cats can rest. The cats were caught in the wild a few years ago and handed over to the DWNP. They have been living in the Sungai Dusun enclosure since January 2010, and are by the date of this study, used to their current environment. Data collection and recording equipment Six Keep Guard camera traps (model number: KG-680V) were used to collect photos of the cats throughout all 24 hours of the day, and 1 camera trap (same model) was used to collect video of pool 1 where the food items for the cats were placed. Pictures and video were recorded on replaceable SD memory cards and were copied to a laptop computer for analysis each day at 7:00 pm. The cameras had a 1 second response time, so if an event was shorter than this (eg. a cat runs in and out of the screen), it would not be recorded. The cameras traps used heat signatures to identify when something living moved in front of the camera. Video recordings were set to record 15 second videos for each event. Camera trapping was chosen as the only method of data recording for this experiment, since the cats were (at least initially) scared of the observers, and would not come out of hiding until no one was around. Food Choice and Feeding Habits of The Flat-Headed Cat 39 (Prionailurus planiceps) in Captivity Figure 1. Sketch of the cat enclosure with measurements of the walls' dimensions. Interior items are not to scale, but serve to illustrate the relative positions of various items, including water pools and the hollow log in which the cats would sleep during a large part of the day. The yellow dots with black arrows indicate the placement and viewing direction of the camera traps inside the enclosure. The transparent yellow zone around the pool indicates the approximately 1 meter zone around pool 1 within which events is categorized as being close to water, as described below. Chicken and frogs would be placed on the indicated feeding spots. North is pointing downwards. Animal feeding trials The study took place from 8th February to 4th March 2011. The cats were fed once a day during the experiment, and were given several hours in which to finish their meal. Most of the time the cats were fed at 9 am, however initially feeding was at 3 pm. Leftover food was always collected at 7 pm. 40 John Rasmussen The cats were fed combinations of 3 basic food items; dead frogs (3-5cm, locally caught, species unknown), fish (17-20cm, catfish Clarias batrachus and Indian mackerel, Rastrelliger kanagurta), and chicken pieces without feathers (two chicken piece was roughly equal to volume of 1-2 average catfish). The cats were fed different types of live or dead food items, with live and deadfish placed in the pool, and dead frogs and chicken on plates within 10 cm of the pond edge. More trials with frogs would have been helpful, but according to the local staff who bought the food for the experiment, frogs were more difficult to acquire, and thus sometimes trials were affected by the availability of food types. The cats have always been fed on feeding plates since moving to Sungai Dusun. On a few of the trials with chicken, a bit of carnivore supplement powder was added to the chicken, as the staff wanted them to have this with their meals. It has a scent of meat in higher concentrations, but in the amounts put on the chicken bits (1 teaspoon for the trials) it is more or less odourless (to humans). Since the cats behaved no differently with or without the supplement, the presence of the supplement on the chicken is considered to be of no consequence for this study. When analyzing where the cats would eat the caught fish, it was decided that feeding events within a zone of approximately 1 meter from the water (and including the pool itself) was categorized as “pool 1”, which is either close to water or in water. The 1 meter zone was decided upon because the kitten described in Muul and Lim (1970) would drag the caught fish 2 meters from water, but given that this enclosure is rather small, 1 meter was decided to be enough (going more than 2 meters from one side of the pool would almost make the cat hit the walls of the enclosure).
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