Cats inherit prey killing skills but they are refined with learning (infographic)

Image in the public domain.

You might, in an idle moment, ask yourself if domestic cats inherit their ability to kill prey or whether they learn the skill from their mother. Fair question and the answer can been seen in the infographic below which I prepared based on my own knowledge refined with information from Dr Desmond Morris who I believe is still the world's best cat behaviour. He was the first to apply his considerable skills to writing a book - a bestseller the world over - 'Catwatching' about cat behaviour. He explains cat behavior so elegantly and logically. All subsequent books on cat behaviour follow his.

Is actually killing prey a learned behavior for cats? by Michael Broad

The domestic cat is a killing machine. Their anatomy has evolved over eons to be hight tuned up for killing prey animals. Hunting is the raison d'etre of cats. As kittens when they play they are practicing their hunting skills. All play for cats is based on hunting and killing.

I have argued that the inherited hunting prowess of the domestic cat stands in the way for many people of a good relationship. Think of their claws for instance. Some people hate them and ask their vet to remove them. A cruel act as far as I am concerned because claws are an important and integral part of the sophisticated anatomy of the cat. Without them their behaviour is affected and many declaw ops are botched horribly.

Cats are very quick. Their reflexes are faster than those of snakes. They can avoid being bitten by a snake as they can back of extremely rapidly in reaction to a lunge by a snake. Just one more example of the super-refinement of the domestic cat making them a wonderful hunter.

If the domestic cat was not such a refined hunter they would be better pets! We love the cat but we put up with their constant desire to hunt and the refined skills that accompany it.

The desire to hunt can be squashed out of a cat by keeping them indoors full-time long enough. They give up trying to express their natural desires and curl up and go to sleep. For me, this is a failure in our relationship. It is unfair. Humans fight for their basic rights. Yet millions of humans deny their cat some basic rights.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

How Chekhov's uncle made his cat frightened of mice!

Anto Chekov in 1889. Image: Wikipedia.

Anton Chekov (1860-1904) wrote a story about his uncle and how inadvertently his uncle trained his cat to become frightened of mice when he was trying to train them to catch mice. At the time the cat was a kitten. Each time a mouse was caught in a trap, uncle Pyotr grabbed his kitten and pushed his/her face towards the mouse. When the mouse was released, the by then terrified kitten ran away.

I think it was the whole experience of being pushed into the mouse. Perhaps the kitten associated the mouse with the handling they'd received from uncle Pyotr. It was a form of negative reinforcement. The opposite to the classic positive reinforcement training model.

It is strange that the 'training' completely upturned the cat's natural predatory drive to catch mice. That said another factor would be that kittens might be cautious around mice as they might believe that they could be harmed. Mice are amazingly brave in the face of instant death in the jaws of a cat. They stand on their hind legs and scream at the top of their voice.

Chekov

Anton Chekhov, often spelled as Anton Chekov, was a prominent Russian playwright, short story writer, and physician. He was born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, a port city in southern Russia, and passed away on July 15, 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany. Chekhov is considered one of the greatest playwrights and short story writers in world literature.

He is renowned for his unique style that combined naturalism and symbolism, portraying the complexities of human nature and the subtleties of everyday life. Chekhov's works are characterized by their deep psychological insight, realistic dialogue, and the exploration of the human condition.

Some of his most notable works include plays such as "The Seagull," "Uncle Vanya," "Three Sisters," and "The Cherry Orchard." These plays often depict the struggles and disillusionments of the Russian middle class during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In addition to his plays, Chekhov wrote numerous short stories, often with a focus on the lives of ordinary people and their struggles. His short stories are celebrated for their concise yet powerful narratives and exploration of the human psyche.

Chekhov's contributions to literature have had a lasting impact, and his works continue to be widely studied, performed, and appreciated worldwide.

Why do cats have whiskers? It is cruel to trim them.

A domestic cat's whiskers (and the same, of course, applies to feral and stray cats) are remarkable items of feline anatomy. Most people think of them as serving a single purpose: to measure the width of gaps to tell the cat if she can get through it but they do a lot more than that.

They are very sensitive as at their base there is a mass of nerve endings. This makes cats' whiskers so sensitive they can feel air currents wafting around solid objects which the cat can't see clearly in the dark depths of night even with their super-sensitive eyes.

Vital cat's whiskers. Image: MikeB

Night hunting

Whiskers are particularly important when a cat hunts at night. Dr. Desmond Morris in his seminal book Cat Watching tells us that we know whiskers are vital to a cat when hunting at night because if they are damaged, they cannot make a perfectly clean kill in the dark but when they are in perfect condition, they can kill cleaning in the depths of night. 

Feelers

They achieve this because these supersensitive appendages a.k.a. vibrissae can feel the neck of the mouse or bird that the cat has caught and armed with the information that whiskers pass back to their brain they are able to visualise the neck and the position of the vertebrae within the neck and deliver their killing nape of the neck bite to split the vertebrae and kill the prey animal.

In this example, the whiskers are acting like feelers and they become the eyes of the domestic cat in the dark. They have a split-second ability to check the body outline of the victim. Dr. Morris believes that the tips of the whiskers "must read off the details of the shape of the prey, like a blind man reading Braille, and in an instant tell the cat how to react".

And in some photographs of cats that have caught prey the whiskers are almost wrapped around the animal's body passing back vital information to the cat's brain about the slightest movement if the prey is still alive.

Nocturnal hunter

And we know that the domestic cat is a primarily nocturnal hunter although they are diurnal meaning they hunt at night and day but they favour dawn and dusk i.e. they are crepuscular. This is because that is the time when prey animals are more active. Because of this whiskers are particularly vital in their success rate in killing prey.

Anatomy

Anatomically speaking, the whiskers are greatly enlarged and stiffened hairs as you no doubt know. They are twice the thickness of ordinary hairs. And as you also might know they are embedded in the tissue of the cat's upper lip to a depth of three times that of other hairs. That last bit you probably didn't realise and deep under the skin they are supplied with a mass of nerve endings as I've mentioned above.

Normally, a cat has 24 whiskers, 12 on each side of the nose. They are arranged in horizontal rows.  The length of whiskers varies enormously between cats. Here for example are the amazing whiskers on a female cat:

Amazing whiskers on a cute female cat. Image in public domain.

Moveable

They can move forwards when the cat wants to check things out with their whiskers. If you put a cat tease in front of a cat's face you might be lucky enough to see their whiskers dart forwards as if to touch the feathers of the tease.

And they can move backwards when the cat needs to protect them as part of a defensive action. And they can move backwards when for example the cat has their head in a food or a water bowl. This brings up another issue which is "whiskers stress". 

Whisker stress

Many people believe that some cat bowls are the wrong shape i.e. they are too deep and too narrow. Cat food bowl should be quite wide and flattish. This allows the whiskers to avoid the sides of the bowl which avoids whiskers stress which is a form of irritation to the cat and it might be so bad as to encourage the cat to not feed. I don't think that happens an awful lot but it may happen in certain individual cats.

Also, the top two rows of whiskers can be moved independently of the bottom two. The strongest whiskers are in rows two and three according to Dr. Morris.

Non-facial whiskers

You will also see whiskers in other parts of the body. For example, there are a few on the cheeks, over the eyes and on the chin.  Surprisingly, you might also see some at the back of the front legs. They are all sensitive detectors.

The cat's whiskers

When we say that something is "the cat's whiskers" we mean that it is very good. It is an apt expression because whiskers are indeed very good. They are a very special piece of feline anatomy.

Trimming

For this reason, they should never be trimmed or cut in anyway shape or form. Some people ask whether they can trim a cat's whiskers. The answer quite positively is no as you can understand from the long description above. 

Image: MikeB

My now deceased sister cut off the whiskers of our family cat when she was a girl. To this day I have no idea why she did it. It was a cruel act.

Hairless cats

Some purebred cats have crinkly whiskers or no whiskers due to a genetic mutation. I am referring to the hairless cats; the Sphynx and Don Sphynx. 

Hairless cat showing poor quality whiskers. Image: Pixels by Pixabay.

This is an example of how breeding a purebred cat based on a genetic mutation which creates a defect (no hair and poor whiskers) can be cruel to the cat. A hairless cat cannot rely on their whiskers as described above.

Domestic cats enjoy small spaces like glass vases because they feel safer and it's fun

This is all about feeling secure and having fun. And that's interesting because it hints at the possibility (fact?) that domestic cats often feel a little insecure and need more entertainment. Why? Because they are barely domesticated and live in a human environment which is inherently unnatural despite their great ability to adapt.

We see domestic cats jump into boxes, large and small. And we see them wriggle and squirm into glass vases as in the video on this page.

The underlying motivation is the same: a feeling of security. Plus, there must be an element of self-entertainment.

The Twitter video below may stop working. If that has happened, I am sorry but I can't control it.

liquid mode activate pic.twitter.com/J1DTpwmPNr

— cats being weird little guys (@weirdlilguys) December 27, 2022

Domestic cats need mental stimulation as many live indoors full-time. Humans are often too busy or pre-occupied to entertain their cat companions. They have to find ways to entertain themselves.

Cats are also naturally and instinctively inquisitive. It is part of their hunting skill set. When hunting they have to investigate all the time to check out the availability of possible prey animals.

That's inquisitiveness in action for survival. But in the human home it is for a substitute: entertainment.

Indoor/outdoor cat becomes very hungry in the winter

On social media, a cat owner tells us that she has lived with her cat for about a year.  During the summer months, her cat is very much an indoor/outdoor cat. She spends all day, every day outside and prefers to sleep outside under a certain plant in her back garden. She says that "during summer she was out all day barely eating her food". She's not sure but she says "maybe she was catching mice".

Indoor/outdoor cat. This is not the cat referred to in the article. Image: by Sa Ka from Pixabay.

RELATED: Are indoor or indoor/outdoor cats healthier?

Since the weather has turned and become much less agreeable for an indoor/outdoor cat she's become more "homely". She does not like the rain very much. And "she is suddenly so hungry!"

Whatever she feeds her, she demands more. She says that "some days I break and give her another tiny bit of biscuits or another day one of the kids got excited and fed her another packet".

Well, the woman is providing her cat with only dry cat food and not enough of it, it seems to me. The received wisdom of cat experts is that this is incorrect. Good quality wet cat food is better than dry cat food as it contains more water (70% compared to around 10%). Domestic cats do not drink enough water to compensate for the lack of water in dry cat food. This leads them to being mildly dehydrated. Therefore, cats must be provided with wet cat food.

As to the fact that she is suddenly very hungry this must be because she is a great hunter and during the summer months, she obtains most of her food through hunting, probably mice, near where she lives. And clearly, she does not bring her food back into the home. Not all cats do this. And/or she was being fed by a neighbour but the hunting theory is almost certainly the correct one.

A lot of domestic cat hunting takes place out of sight and out of mind of their owners. This applies to all domestic cats allowed outside. Although, we know too, that many cats like to bring their 'kills' inside the home, extend the hunt inside the home and then finally kill and eat their prey in a quiet corner of their "den".

The question on the social media site (mumsnet.com) regarding this cat is that she is a "very hungry cat". That's a question because she is asking "why is my cat suddenly very hungry?". The answer is she's not hunting any more in the winter months and therefore requires feeding. And she is not being fed enough and the wrong food by the sound of it.

REALATED: 16 tips on cat worms and deworming.

A side issue is that she should be dewormed regularly to get rid of endoparasites that she is ingesting with the mice. It is almost certain that she has worms after summer months of mice hunting.

Cat does 'vacuum activity' jaw chattering while attacking a fly!

This is unusual in some respects because normally we see what is described as "vacuum activity" when a full-time indoor cat is looking out the window at a bird and they are instinctively compelled to practice the bite on the nape of the neck of the bird to kill it. Because they can't get at the real thing the domestic cat instinctively chatters their jaw and Dr. Desmond Morris calls this "vacuum activity". 

It's called that because it occurs in a vacuum namely there is no actual prey item in the cat's jaws. Some people call this a "tooth-rattling stutter". I prefer jaw chattering but you can name it what you like.

From @jacquardvenus: "#ekekekkekkek" #catsofinstagram pic.twitter.com/nNlx54zkXh

— Cats of Instagram (@catsofinstagram) March 31, 2022

Note: This is an embedded tweet. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

The cat that you see in the video who is stalking a little fly is performing a highly specialised killing bite as if the fly is within its jaws. Actually, the cat is behaving as if he or she is stalking a larger prey animal, normally a bird. If this was a genuine kill by a cat on a bird, his jaws would perform a "rapid juddering movement as he inserts his canines into the neck, slipping them down between vertebrae to sever the spinal cord.

Cat does 'vacuum activity' jaw chattering while attacking a fly! Screenshot.

Clearly, this can't happen with a fly as a prey animal because they haven't got a spinal cord! They have an exoskeleton instead 😉. This fly is the only prey animal available to this poor cat who is stuck indoors I suspect. 

I am all in favour of full-time indoor cats but one of the problems as is very apparent in this video is that cats don't get a chance to express their natural desires which more or less comes down to hunting.

So, when the best thing they've got to hunt is a fly the cat goes after it. Employing all the usual tricks to hunt a prey animal including stalking the fly along the carpet and then chattering his teeth in that version of vacuum activity and finally pouncing on the fly but failing to capture it.

Why does this cat chatter his teeth when he sees a fly on the window?

Normally you see this form of "vacuum activity" when a domestic cat sees a bird outside the window and the cat is normally a full-time indoor cat. In this instance, the same effect is seen when a young cat sees a fly on a window inside the home. There are many amusing videos of this on YouTube.

Young cat performs the vacuum activity teeth chattering practice bite when looking at a fly inside the home. Screenshot.

The same instinctive response takes place. The experts say that this form of, apparently, strange feline behaviour is a cat performing their highly specialised killing-bite as if they had the bird in their mouth already. This cat does not recognise the difference between a bird and a fly because the reaction is entirely instinctive.

Cats have a particular way of killing birds (normally). It brings about almost instantaneous death. A quick death is important in terms of avoiding injury. The cat crunches down with his long canine teeth aimed at the nape of the bird's neck. With a rapid juddering movement of the jaws, he inserts his canine teeth into the neck, slipping them between vertebrae to sever the spinal cord. 

This is what you see in this video when this young cat is 'chattering his teeth'. It's a bit like playing air guitar. There's no animal there to kill but as he can't get to the animal to kill, he perhaps, in frustration, does it all the same. My cat doesn't use this form of killing-bite on pigeons. He uses the neck bite which is a suffocating bite. This is exactly the same bite employed by the big cats when killing large prey animals. You have perhaps seen it on video. Basically, my cat suffocates pigeons which I think is horrible to see because he can do it right in front of me sometimes.

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it. If a link it left behind, please click on it to be taken to the video.

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My cat brings a magpie into the home and there is bird poo and pee everywhere

My cat is a great hunter. Recently, he caught two mice within 60 minutes and devoured them under my bed in the dead of night. I heard it all. He has caught pigeons and now he has brought a magpie into the home. The reason why he is able to catch a magpie is partly my fault. I feed squirrels. Squirrels chuck a lot of squirrel feed onto the ground. Pigeons and magpies eat this food from the ground. My cat stalks the birds and he has regrettably on occasions caught them. I can't do much about it and I don't want to stop feeding squirrels. Although I do warn them when he goes out so I do my bit to stop him attacking birds.

My cat brings a magpie into the home and there is bird poo and pee everywhere

On this occasion I was watching television and I heard a commotion. It was noisy and it sounded disturbing. I got up and immediately saw that a magpie was flying around my kitchen banging into walls, windows and the bifold doors that lead out to the garden. While the bird was doing this it was pooing and peeing over everything.

I frantically opened the bifold doors. The magpie was constantly charging against them and suddenly there was air and no glass and so he passed through into the back garden where he clung onto a fence for a while, looking over his shoulder at my charging cat. He then flew to another part of the fence and eventually flew out of the garden looking unwell but he made it.

I am sure that he was injured to a certain extent but I would hope that he recovered and is now all right. It took me 20 minutes to clean up while my cat looked on completely nonplussed by all the events. It is just another little episode in the life of a cat caregiver. I even found a scratch on the hardwood floor that wasn't there before. I'm sure it was caused by the magpie as it panicked desperately to get out in complete terror.

When a bird charges against a glass window that hard and does it over and over again with loud thumps it has to be desperately frightened. I'm surprised that they don't knock themselves out. Sometimes they do.

When peace returned to the home, I thought that it might have been a good idea to have filmed the whole thing but that is not my style. I'm not a natural video maker. My first thought is not to exploit the situation and make a video. My first thought is animal welfare; on this occasion to get the bird out of there. This is instinctive and therefore there is no video record of this minor but disturbing event.

Do male lions hunt?

Yes, male lions do hunt but they are solitary hunters in contrast to lionesses who hunt in groups, in partnership. Further, male lions use the cover of dense vegetation to stalk and ambush in the classic style of wild cats. The general feeling before about 2013 was that male lions sat around to let the lionesses do the hunting and then they would be the masters of the feast afterwards. 

Scared male lion waits for a herd of buffalo to go in the Masai Mara, Kenya. I suspect that this male was not hunting at the tine but came across the buffalo who intimidated him because of their numbers. Lion can be killed by buffalo. Photo: Olav Thokle, 54, from Norway.

But using GPS collar trackers and airborne Light Detection and Ranging measurements which provided 3D mapping of the landscape and vegetation, researchers found that male lions did indeed leap out of thick vegetation to ambush their prey.

The researchers studied a pride of 7 lions in South Africa's Kruger National Park. The females hunt in the open savanna while males tend to hunt in places where there is more vegetation and brush. Both females and males tend to hunt at night.

CLICK FOR MANY PAGES ON THE LION

Success rates vary substantially. The success rate for zebra is about 11% whereas for wildebeest it is about 30%. This success rate in hunting springhare was found to be 52% in a different study. In one study it was found that the hunting success rate was higher on moonless nights. In this study in Uganda, they found that the overall success rate varied between 27.1% and 30.5%. Lions are generally more successful hunters than other wild cat species.

Sometimes male lions are scared of their prey animals. It depends upon the circumstances. There is a photograph today in the news media online of a male lion scared of a large herd of buffalo. The lion clambers up a tree to safety and stays there for hours while he is surrounded by the buffalo. It happened in the Masai Mara, Kenya. Above is a photograph of the lion waiting patiently.

And there's a story from a study carried out in 1972 about the spotted hyena which stated that "in a non-feeding situation, two lionesses climbed trees to escape from a mob of 18 hyenas". It depends upon the balance of power. If there is one lion at a kill after the others have left and the hyenas move in then that lion will disappear. But in general, quite a small number of lions can clear away quite a large number of hyenas.

Cat sits on owner's lap and reacts 'weirdly' every time he spins a coin

The title to this Daily Motion video is in fact: Cat Sits in Owner's Lap and Reacts Weirdly Every Time he Spins Coin on Table. And although the grammar is poor that is not the point. The word "weirdly" is the problem for me because I do not think that this cat is acting weirdly. I think we can explain what he or she is doing. 

Cat prepares to pounce on spinning coin. Screenshot.

You can see the cat placing their right foreleg over their eye and partly over their head when their owner spins a coin on the table. I think this feline behaviour is misleading because all the cat is doing is preparing to pounce onto the coin. 

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

The position of the foreleg is incidental. It looks rather strange and as if the cat is deliberately making this action for some 'weird' reason but he is not. He's simply holding his paw and leg in this position so that it is ready to grab the coin. The cat perceives the coin as a prey animal. It is moving in an interesting way which catches his attention and to all intents and purposes it is prey to be attacked and in the last segment of the video he does just that.

So, this is predictable feline behaviour and it's a game. All cat play is based around hunting and attacking. That's why it is said that the best cat toys are those that can be destroyed by the cat because the toy better replicates or mimics an animal to be hunted, destroyed and eaten. When domestic cats become bored with toys that have been brought with great care by their owner, it is because they can't be destroyed as they are made of plastic. The argument is that cat toys should be made of some other destructible material.

One of the best toys is a ball of scrunched up waste paper. That can be chucked around by a cat and partially destroyed by raking the hind legs over it as it is grasped in the forelegs. Home-made toys are often better than the commercial variety.

Should we genetically engineer cats to curb their urge to kill?

Not long ago I proposed genetically engineering feral cats to make them infertile as an alternative to TNR programs which includes spaying and neutering. But it might be a better idea to genetically engineer feral cats. That would seem to be a more elegant way to control the feral cat population. I don't know whether it's been discussed but what is also being discussed is genetically engineering cats to modify their behaviour, to stop their urge to kill.

Photo: Pixabay

That would mean altering the most fundamental aspect of a cat's behaviour which is to hunt, stalk, attack, kill and eat prey animals. In the case of domestic cats that usually means small mammals such as voles, mice and even rats occasionally (plus reptiles, birds and insects). I'm not sure if it is viable. I'm not a good enough scientist to decide how you'd go about doing that.

The obvious initial downside is animal testing. I can see animal testing taking place which would be cruel. I could not justify it. I don't believe that any animl testing is ethically and justifiable today. It is time to stop it.

You can achieve character changes to a certain extent by selective breeding. This is breeding through artificial selection so you only select those cats which are very passive and mild mannered with a known trait of a disinterest in hunting. That might be hard to believe but some domestic cat hardly hunt at all whereas others are obsessed with it such as my cat!

The average domestic cat will certainly enjoy hunting to a certain extent but it would seem fair to suggest that we could select the least motivated hunters and selectively breed from them to the point where you only had domestic cats that were disinterested in what should be their primary activity: hunting.

Brief research tells me that that scientists genetically engineer animals by introducing a beneficial gene into their DNA. I suppose, therefore, it would mean scientist deciding which genes and on which chromosomes behavioural traits such as hunting are located. 

Then they could remove those genes and replace them with the genes of a cat with known traits including a disinterest in hunting. I'm guessing wildly at this point. But the concept of genetically engineering cats to modify their behaviour to eliminate hunting is fascinating but it seems to be a bridge too far at this stage. What do you think?

How can cats jump so high?

The answer to the question is all about mechanics and muscles. The domestic cat and indeed the wild cats have lots of fast-twitch fatiguing muscle cells. These cells are designed to propel the animal quickly; to allow the animal to accelerate quickly, but they're not very good at prolonged effort because they tire. The cat is a sprinter rather than a long-distance runner such as the African wild dog, mule or horse.

The puma is perhaps the best jumper of the large wild cat species. Image: PoC.

The second reason is all about the mechanics, the leg bones, particularly the hind leg bones of the domestic cat which are long. The muscles working to move these long levers allow the cat to jump so high. The concept of long levers applying a stronger force than short levers can be seen in bolt cutters. They have long handles. And if you want to unscrew a nut which is rusted in or very stiff, if you use a long spanner you will be more successful than if you use a short one.

And of course the hindquarters of a domestic cat and the other cats such as the mountain lion are very powerful. When these muscles contract quickly combined with long levers the cat is propelled forward either to attack an animal or leap upwards. 

There is also the matter of power-to-weight ratio. The heavier cats will be less good at jumping than the lighter species. The lion, for instance, is not a great jumper relative to the leopard which is considerably lighter.

The lion is built to grab hold of large prey and subdue them. This is why their arms (forelegs) are immensely strong much like the tiger's. This power-to-weight ratio is best seen in the caracal which is a medium-sized wild cat species. This is the cat that jumps the highest. They have an ideal power-to-weight ratio. The picture below is of a caracal catching or trying to catch a bird (or an object thrown by someone to simulate a bird) in flight:

Caracal leaping to catch a bird in flight. Picture in public domain.

All the medium-sized cats are probably more adept at jumping vertically than the big cats. There is too much inertia to overcome in a big cat and the power-to-weight ratio is not as good as for the smaller species.

And one of the factor which may play a role as to why cats can jump so high is the floating shoulder. The forelimbs are connected to the rest of the body by muscle. The cats clavicle floats and is anchored by muscle. This allows cats to lengthen their stride and it enhances the range of motions that cats have. This indirectly helps a cat to jump well.

The cat's foot is elongated and it looks like a leg bone but it isn't. At the end are the toes and cats walk on their toes because they are digitigrades. I would argue that this also adds to the leverage that a domestic cat has which once again supports the ability to jump high and horizontally over long distances.

The video on this page is of a female F1 Savannah cat whose name is Magic. I don't know whether she is alive still but at the time she was the tallest domestic cat to the shoulder in the world. Savannah cats of this type i.e. first filials have a serval father and the serval has the longest legs to body size of all the wild cats. That's why the F1 Savannah cat is such a fantastic upwards jumper. Once again it's about leverage using long levers.