Otocolobus manul
Diet
The cat's diet largely depends on what is available, which is mostly rodents , insects, and lizards in the mountains. Typically Pallas cats weigh about 2.5-4.5kg According to savemanul.org, Pallas cats prefer to eat Brandt voles, Daurian ground squirrels, Pika, and Mongolian hamsters. This was concluded by a study that this organization did based on what was found in the cat's scat.
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The cat's also eat other small rodents, small birds, and sometimes even animals like lizards. An article on dietary composition and prey selection for these felines discussed the different type of feeders but "predicted Pallas's cats would be generalists because of the high degree of seasonal variation in the diversity and prey consumption [...]," (Steven Roaa, et al., August 2010). During troubling times in which these obligate carnivores cannot find meat, they turn to eating vegetation. While consuming plants has its disadvantage from the cellulose intake, it can also benefit the felines by consuming medicinal compound plants (Hart, Benjamin L., and Lynette A. Hart, 2018) or simply by allowing them to live until the next live prey. The data of Pallas cats eating vegetation whether on accident or purposefully was found by analyzing the scat of these cats (Yoshimura, Hiroto, Satoshi Hirata, and Kodzue Kinoshita, 2021).
Hunting
While Pallas cat's can use their small. strong bodies to quickly hunt there are a few factor that can keep from them from retrieving food and staying healthy. One of these factors is the same thing that benefits them: their size. Being a smaller wildcat can take a toll on them as they need to travel large ranges to find prey since it can be scarce. "Small body size creates other potential limitations to Pallas’ cat resilience when coupled with large range size [...] However, if Pallas’ cats are subsisting near to their metabolic limit, as suggested by their large home range to body mass ratio, then energetic constraints may limit their ability to expand their range when disturbance reduces resource availability," (Munkhtsog, Ross, and Brown, 2004). Being short and stout, Pallas cats need to quickly find food without expending too much energy but this also limits metabolic rate and how far the wildcats travel.