We have all heard horror stories about wolves, killing whole flocks of sheep, or foxes exterminating chicken many times. Half-scientifically the whole thing is called “Surplus Killing“.
Surplus Killing describes the occurrence when predators kill more prey than they can eat and then leave the killed animals. That can have several causes. One is that they are doing it for fun. Especially in cats and their relatives, it may happen that the hunting is considered a game or that predators hunt to prove that they have the skill to kill; or as in domestic cats, they put their prey into their owners beds as a symbol of gratitude.
Another reason may be that carnivores fall into a frenzy. This occurs when the prey is crowded in a confined space. Here it’s the urge to kill which is caused by the prey’s panicky attempts to escape , which triggers a kind of bloodlust. The predator is flooded with stimuli so he only stops to kill, if nothing’s alive around him anymore.
Another reason of Surplus Killing is that the predator wants to derive its competitors of food resources to. This is in the wild quite rare amongst highly developed animals. But when humans began to build stables and pastures, the prey could not escape anymore. And wolves, foxes, bobcats and Co.started to empty them. That was the beginning of the image of the evil robbers.
Some hunters, however, hunt and bury their prey in the snow to create a food storage in winter. So you see, the statement that animals only kill what they eat is not always true …
Copyright and Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing, http://home.arcor.de/marri/jagd.htm
