Having lunch stolen is all in a day's work for cheetahs, scientists show

For a fleet-footed cheetah, survival balances on the point between how much energy it loses in hunting for a meal and the energy it gains from actually eating it. Now, a study in Science follows the big cat to find out how it makes this lifestyle work.

For carnivores, what you want to eat may be bigger than you, can sometimes fight back and might even be able to outrun you. A carnivore runs the risk of spending a lot of energy for just one meal and ending up empty-clawed.

It is difficult to tell how cheetahs minimise these energetic costs in nature, on often rugged and unforgiving terrain.

The cheetah engages in high-speed chases to bring down, say, a gazelle. While the cheetah is fast, it is vulnerable to other predators like lions and hyenas who muscle in after the cat does all the work to steal the meal.

So on top of having to work hard to get a meal, the cheetah can easily lose it to another predator. How does it deal with these costs?

The scientists found that the cheetahs can offset their losses from stolen food - a phenomenon called kleptoparasitism - by travelling wider distances. They could actually deal with a 25 per cent kleptoparasitism rate, because it would require only an additional 1.1 hours of time and 12 per cent extra daily-energy expenditure to make up for the loss.