Movement in the wild: Why dogs follow paths and cats roam

Watch a dog pacing the same path in a yard. Now watch a cat stepping into a new corner. Those small details reflect something much bigger. Movement patterns in animals are not random quirks. They are strategies shaped by millions of years of evolution.

Scientists long believed predators wandered their ranges in no particular order. That assumption guided how models predicted hunting, encounters, and even conservation outcomes. But a global study has now revealed the truth: many carnivores follow hidden routes, while others roam freely.

Global study of animal movement

Researchers tracked 1,239 carnivores from 34 species over ten years, across six continents. GPS collars mapped their steps, creating the largest dataset of carnivore movement ever assembled. The comparisons made one split stand out: canids reused travel routes far more often than felids.

“We found that carnivore species use space in fundamentally different ways,” said William Fagan, a professor of biology at University of Maryland.

“Members of the dog family appear much more structured in their uses of space. On average, they rely more heavily on favored travel routes compared to members of the cat family.”

Dogs follow fixed routes

Wolves, foxes, and coyotes carve paths through their territories and return to them again and again. These repeated routes, now called routeways, act like invisible highways.

Lions, bobcats, and leopards behave differently. Their paths scatter across the landscape without the same structure.

The difference runs deeper than habit. Canids rely on routine pathways. Felids prefer flexibility. This discovery challenges how scientists once described predator movement, replacing the old picture of random wandering with structured, lineage-specific strategies.

Cat and dog movement isn’t random

For decades, textbooks presented movement as random, much like particles bouncing in a gas. That view shaped predator-prey models and disease predictions.

The new findings rewrite the rules. Structured routeways show up in many carnivores, making movements more predictable than once thought.

This shift means conservationists and ecologists need fresh tools. Route-based movement changes how species interact with prey, mates, and pathogens. It also shifts how humans should plan wildlife protection.

An evolutionary split

The story begins millions of years ago. Dogs and cats diverged 41 to 51 million years back. Their bodies followed different paths too.

Cats developed floating clavicles and highly flexible shoulders, which allow sharp turns and bursts of agility. Dogs evolved stiffer joints, better for endurance and straight-line travel.

“We suspect that this split reflects deep evolutionary differences in how these species navigate and find their way around,” Fagan explained.

“Canids possess superior olfactory abilities compared to felids, potentially helping them establish and remember preferred travel routes. It looks like these different navigation strategies have developed over millions of years since dogs and cats last shared a common ancestor.”

The role of smell and memory

Scent adds another layer. Wolves and foxes mark paths, then revisit them with help from powerful noses. That memory of place reinforces repeated travel. Cats rely more on stealth, vision, and flexible responses to their surroundings.

Cognition could also matter. In lab studies, dogs often perform better than cats in memory and navigation tasks. If that advantage extends to wild relatives, it may help explain the reliance on fixed paths.

Cats, in contrast, appear to make decisions more on the spot, adjusting quickly to each situation.

Tested across cats and dogs habitats

Justin M. Calabrese, senior author and head of the Earth System Science research group at CASUS in Germany, emphasized the strength of the evidence.

“Given the inherent heterogeneity in such a large, global dataset, the magnitude and consistency of these differences is striking,” he said. “However, we were careful to check that the lineage-specific differences persisted even after for controlling for many potentially confounding factors.”

When researchers focused on nine landscapes that hosted both cats and dogs, the gap grew even sharper. The split held up even after removing variables like vegetation or human disturbance.

Opportunities for conservation

Predictable paths carry risk. Poachers can exploit known routes. Roads cutting across those paths can kill animals more often. Yet predictability also creates openings for protection. Wildlife crossings and conservation zones can be placed where animals are most likely to move.

Fagan and colleagues also point to wider effects. Movement influences how diseases spread, how predators find mates, and how prey respond to risk.

Workshops at the University of Maryland now connect these findings to new mathematical models of ecological dynamics.

Global research on cats and dogs

“This research was a massive undertaking, beginning as a multitude of email exchanges during the COVID pandemic and ultimately transforming into the world’s biggest comparative carnivore movement dataset involving 177 collaborators around the world,” said Fagan.

“The project demonstrated how modern GPS technology and sophisticated analysis methods developed by our research group can reveal fascinating hidden aspects of animal behavior that were impossible to study just a short time ago.”

The work drew in researchers across disciplines. Biologists, mathematicians, technicians, and students combined efforts to map unseen behavior on a global scale.

Maps we cannot see

Canids carve highways into their landscapes. Felids move more loosely, favoring flexibility over fixed routes. Both approaches reflect evolutionary trade-offs shaped by millions of years of survival.

The study makes one point clear. Movement is not chaos. It is strategy. Understanding those strategies changes how scientists see predators and how conservationists protect them.

Dogs and cats may share our homes, but in the wild, their paths through the world could not be more different.

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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