Living with the enemy: avoidance of hyenas and lions by cheetahs in the Serengeti

Predator avoidance is likely to play a strong role in structuringspecies communities, even where actual mortality due to predationis low. In such systems, mortality may be low because predatoravoidance is effective, and if the threat of predation is liftedthen entire community structures may be altered. Where competitionis intense, then competitor avoidance may have a similar impacton communities. Avoidance behaviors have been documented fora wide range of species, but this is the first attempt to documentavoidance behavior within a large carnivore community. Audioplayback techniques are used to examine the risk perceivedby cheetahs from their two main competitors that are also theirmain predators, lions and hyenas. The results from these experimentsshow that cheetahs actively moved away from lion and hyenaplayback experiments, compared with dummy playbacks where no sound was played. Cheetahs showed no differences in their responsesto playbacks dependent on their sex or reproductive status,suggesting they were responding principally to a competitionrather than a predation threat. However, cheetahs were muchless likely to hunt after competitor playbacks than after dummyplaybacks, and this resulted in a lower kill rate after competitorplaybacks, demonstrating that the perceived presence of competitors had a noticeable impact on the foraging rate of cheetahs. Furthermore,while cheetahs moved just as far following lion playbacks asafter hyena playbacks, they spent significantly more time lookingat the loudspeaker and were less likely to make a kill afterlion playbacks, suggesting that cheetahs perceive lions tobe a greater threat than hyenas.