Competitive Behavior

A very interesting thing that happened during our observation was the interaction between the raccoon dog and the cat. The raccoon dog and a couple of cats seem to be inhabiting in the same area, and while we were trying to feed the raccoon dog some tuna, the cats almost always came to intercept the food.

 This video clip, though it is more of an audio clip, is a footage we took while observing their interaction. We put a tuna can in the area where both the raccoon dog and the cat live, the cat approached the tuna can first. The squeaking sound in the clip is the sound made by the raccoon dog when it approached the tuna-eating cat from behind and threatened the cat to run off in order to claim its food. Right after the sound was made, the cat did run away and the raccoon dog took the can all by itself. An interesting thing to note here is that when we repeated the experiment, the raccoon dog continually let the cat approach the can first; even though it seemed to clearly know that it is food.

Then our question is, why does the raccoon dog let the cat approach the food first?

 

Our first hypothesis is that the raccoon dog is testing to see if the food is edible.

In order to test this hypothesis, we can set up an experiment where the raccoon dog is positioned to watch the cat approach a poisoned food first, and see if the raccoon dog still eats the food even after seeing the cat vomiting because of the poison. If the raccoon dog retrains from taking to food, then the hypothesis gains some credibility.

 

The second hypothesis is that the cat approaches the food first because it can smell better. To test this, we can put food in equal distance to the raccoon dog and the cat, of course both of them blindfolded. With varying distance from the food, we can measure their olfactory capability. If the cat indeed can smell better than the raccoon dog, it will be able to detect food that the raccoon dog cannot. Therefore, the raccoon dog will become more dependent on the cat.

 

The relationship between the raccoon dog and the cat in our school seems to be something of a mutualism. They seem to fight against each other sometimes, but they also seem to be helpful to each other to some extent, and it might even be possible that they are exhibiting playful behavior toward each other.