At first glance, Gaia looks like a tabby cat that you could find in your home. She's a petite wisp of cat, weighing only 2.6 pounds at 9 months old. The average weight of a house cat is around 8 to 12 pounds, according to WebMD. So, Gaia is around one-fourth of that size.
Specifically, she's a black-footed cat: a species of endangered cat with black or dark brown spots across their fur. Even though Gaia has big eyes, rounded ears and soft fur, and barely exceeds the size of your average teapot, she's considered the deadliest cat in the world.
If you think that title should belong to a bigger, more menacing cat like a lion or a puma, think again: the black-footed cat has earned that title because they have a 60% success rate when they hunt, according to PBS. They also have earned the honor of being Africa's smallest cat.
By comparison, a lion hunting by itself has a success rate of 17% to 19%. If the lion hunts in pairs or a group, then the rate increases to around 30%, per the African Lion and Environmental Research Trust. In other words, the success rate of a black-footed cat is double that of a lion in a pair or group.
Black-footed cats tend to lurk around at night, per PBS. These cats can leap to capture their prey and prefer to eat a diet of locusts, birds, gerbils and other small rodents.
Due to the small size of these cats, they are adept at camouflaging. "Unlike big cats, the black-footed cats tend to disappear into the tall grasses of the African savannah, making its exploits difficult to track via camera," Smithsonian Magazine reported. Hunting in the brush, these cats can kill up to 10 to 14 rodents or birds every single night.
Gaia, a black-footed cat, peers out from her enclosure at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. Gaia is 9 moths old and weighs 2.6 pounds. The cat's breed is the smallest species of wild cat found in Africa. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News
When black-footed cats are not hunting at night, they are hiding during the day.
According to the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity website, black-footed cats hide out in burrows, caves or dense shrubs to take shelter. They are solitary animals who scientists believe can live up to 13 years in the wild and 15.6 years in captivity.
