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Project properties |
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| Title | Cats consuming natural prey or commercial foods – differences in eating behaviour |
| Group | Behavioural Ecology |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 36 |
| Supervisor(s) | Bonne Beerda, Guido Bosch |
| Examiner(s) | Marc Naguib |
| Contact info | bonne.beerda@wur.nl (BHE), guido.bosch@wur.nl (ANU)
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| Begin date | 2018/02/01 |
| End date | 2020/01/01 |
| Description | Modern foods for pet cats are primarily designed to be safe, tasty and nutritious. The act of eating of such foods (i.e. bites, chews, swallowing) impacts on many aspects, like oral health and appetite regulation. Modern manmade foods for cats deviate considerably in physicochemical properties from natural prey. Differences in oral processing are likely to exists between modern foods and natural prey, but this has not been studied yet. In fact, how a cat exactly eats a mouse is still largely unclear. In this thesis you will build on previous thesis work and extend data on the microstructure of eating in cats. In particular required are data on cats eating small prey (i.e. rodents, birds) and eating modern foods (dry kibbled and moist) as well as a more extensive data analyses. For gaining insight in eating behaviour of modern foods, field work is likely required, which means recruiting owners with indoor-dwelling cats and recording of eating behaviour of these cats |
| Used skills | Design experiments, behavioural observations, literature research, data analyses, scientific writing and presenting |
| Requirements | |