- Recently published research finds that cheetahs aren’t above scavenging other predators’ kills, contrary to the conventional wisdom that they only eat what they kill.
- Direct observations and by-catch data from carnivore research projects in three locations in South Africa and Malawi were used to gather information on cheetah scavenging.
- The researchers say that understanding these behavioral shifts is crucial for cheetah conservation, as successful reintroduction efforts depend on the ability of cheetahs to adapt to new environments and food acquisition strategies.
- However, other cheetah experts question how common this phenomenon is, given that the researchers only recorded three scavenging events between 2019 and 2023.
NAIROBI — Cheetahs are known to be selective in their feeding habits — “clean eaters” that only go after the prime parts of their kill, such as the liver. But a new study has found that the large, slender, spotted cat found in Africa and parts of Western Asia can also scavenge.
Unlike other African predators, cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) rarely search for and collect remains they did not kill themselves, but the study published this month in the journal Ecology and Evolution observed cheetahs scavenging between 2019 and 2023 in three different protected areas: Tswalu Kalahari Reserve and Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa, and Liwonde National Park in Malawi.
“The observations made in this paper were very interesting to us and show that there could be potential for further studies into it,” said lead author Elizabeth Kennedy Overton, a researcher at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.
Cheetahs were previously thought not to scavenge, with few reports in the scientific literature of them doing so, according to the researchers.
“We wanted just to say, look it does happen and it would be interesting to find out the reasons behind it,” added Overton, who currently is doing a Ph.D. on cheetahs in the Kalahari.
According to the study, all the adult cheetahs observed scavenging were animals that had previously been relocated from different areas. During the relocation process, they were temporarily put in holding enclosures known as bomas, where they were provided with supplementary feed in the form of carrion.
One of these cheetahs was a female that was relocated to Liwonde from Mountain Zebra National Park in South Africa. At Liwonde, researchers observed her and her two sub-adult cubs approaching a group of eight cheetahs — one adult female, her five sub-adult cubs, and two adult males — that had killed a kudu and were eating it. Once the group moved off the kill, the relocated mother and her cubs descended on the carcass and ate what was left.
Scavenging episodes like this could be explained by the easy access to food in a situation where food acquisition is potentially difficult due to “old age, loss of hunting partners, or offspring in the case of a mother with cubs,” the researchers note.
Dennis Minja, a biodiversity researcher focusing on the influence of human-induced pressures on cheetah hunting and habitat in the Serengeti ecosystem of Tanzania, said the findings may be questionable since only three observations were reported.
“It would be interesting if [there were] more observations, potentially gathered from other long-term cheetah monitoring programmes,” said Minja who is also a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
“One intriguing point I picked up was that cheetahs might perceive a sense of safety when scavenging on kills made by their kind,” added Minja, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“The familiar scent of other cheetahs could potentially make them feel more at ease, reducing the perceived risk compared to scavenging on kills made by other carnivores.”
He said that in the Serengeti, cheetahs occasionally join other cheetahs at kills, “more often than we have seen them scavenging from dead carrion.”
Bettina Wachter, senior scientist in the Department for Evolutionary Ecology at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, said the cheetahs observed scavenging were either old, with offspring, or in an area with many competitors, which might have put them under energetic pressure, thus they decided to take the risk.
“If cheetahs under energetic pressure accept carcasses to feed from, even though not readily, this can have effects on the prey population and interspecific competition,” she said.
“But I would asses these effects as small as I assume cheetahs will only scavenge in rare occasions,” added Wachter, who wasn’t involved in the study.
The study does not explain the cheetahs’ behavior and only suggests hypothetical causes and impacts. However, the researchers are calling for further investigations into this feeding behavior.
Banner image: A close-up image of a cheetah in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. Image by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay.
Citations:
Overton, E. K., Davis, R. S., Prugnolle, F., Rougeron, V., Honiball, T., Sievert, O., & Venter, J. A. (2025). Carrion in bomas: Multiple observations of cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) scavenging events and potential causes in managed populations. Ecology and Evolution, 15(1). doi:10.1002/ece3.70776
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