Can house cats take down deer?

[Deleted]

I have never heard of this, in any article, headline or study. But I wonder if you guys think this could be successful. I don’t believe this, but i’ve heard of house cats going after lambs and kangaroos.

[Hardcastle]

For a long time I thought the highest feat of a domestic cat was a european brown hare. A fairly common feat for them, but still seemed to be the ceiling. I have not heard of small deer or anything like that ... BUT ... that may be recently bettered by "short eared rock wallaby", which technically are about 1 kg larger than european brown hare on average.

That said, the individual taken does look small -



edit - I just remembered I'm supposed to be banned from this subforum.

[Deleted]

Feb 15, 2023 18:45:32 GMT Hardcastle said:

For a long time I thought the highest feat of a domestic cat was a european brown hare. A fairly common feat for them, but still seemed to be the ceiling. I have not heard of small deer or anything like that ... BUT ... that may be recently bettered by "short eared rock wallaby", which technically are about 1 kg larger than european brown hare on average.

That said, the individual taken does look small -



edit - I just remembered I'm supposed to be banned from this subforum.

* Edit: Everyone's welcome to nerd out on cats here, no exclusions

The dietary niche for felis catus is typically nimble "small prey" 20% or less of it's own bodyweight, although our pet cats have been observed taking animals I guess up to their own size like birds. But deer? How small do deer get? Some sizeable 25 lb Maine Coon, I wonder... But deer doesn't sound like the TYPE of prey domestic cat is designed to subdue.

[Hardcastle]

Feb 15, 2023 19:19:32 GMT @ajay said:

Feb 15, 2023 18:45:32 GMT Hardcastle said:

For a long time I thought the highest feat of a domestic cat was a european brown hare. A fairly common feat for them, but still seemed to be the ceiling. I have not heard of small deer or anything like that ... BUT ... that may be recently bettered by "short eared rock wallaby", which technically are about 1 kg larger than european brown hare on average.

That said, the individual taken does look small -



edit - I just remembered I'm supposed to be banned from this subforum.

* Edit: Everyone's welcome to fag out on cats here, no exclusions

The dietary niche for felis catus is typically nimble "small prey", although our pet cats have been observed taking animals I guess up to their own size like birds. But deer? How small do deer get? Some sizeable 25 lb Maine Coon, I wonder... But deer doesn't sound like the TYPE of prey domestic cat is designed to subdue.

I suspect a royal antelope (3 kg) could be on the menu -


And the primitive Javan Mouse Deer (2 kg) (misnamed, not a deer) -


I think the smallest real deer, the pudu(13 kg), would be too much-

[grippingwhiteness]

The biggest animal a cat killed was a goat lamb. Ig

[Bolushi]

[s]

Roe Deer are very small, 10 to 25kg while adult, European wildcat average is 5kg, so i think a good Wildcat could pull it off

Bobcats do hunt adult Whitetail/Blacktail Deer, and Eurasian Lynx does hunt adult Red Deer over 150kg, so it seems plausible to me.