FERAL Animal Survival: How to Find Food and Eat to Grow

Finding food in FERAL Animal Survival comes down to your animal's diet. Carnivores hunt and kill other animals and then eat the kill, herbivores graze on plants, and eating is what drives the GROWTH meter that carries you from baby to adult. The official game description puts it plainly: you're born as a tiny wolf or a wobbly deer, "find food and water, and grow from baby to adult in the wild" — in a valley of rivers, forests, a hidden lake and the deep gorge where every animal is either THE HUNTER or THE PREY. Food is only half of that survival loop; drinking is the other, covered in the how to find water guide.

Quick answer

Eat whatever matches your animal's diet. Carnivores hunt, kill and then eat other animals; herbivores graze on plants. Eating raises your GROWTH percentage — the tutorial's first mouse took a wolf pup from 7% to 12% — and growth accumulates toward life stages: on the wolf's meter, 34% makes you a teen and unlocks your ability, and the adult threshold is marked at 67%.

• Carnivore prey seen in gameplay so far: mice, snakes, baby deer and elk.
• A hippo player reported grass-eating continuing from plant to plant automatically.
• The scent feature shows where different things are, food and other animals included.
• A new wolf pup starts a three-step tutorial: WASD to move, click to bite the highlighted mouse, then eat it.

Your first meal: the starting tutorial

A new wolf pup spawns into the tutorial in Den Hollow in winter at 6% GROWTH, and its three steps are the whole food loop in miniature:

1. Move and bite. Step 1 displays "CLICK TO BITE THE MOUSE!" over a highlighted mouse, with "WASD to move" shown below — walk up and click to bite it.
2. Eat the kill. Step 2 has you eat the mouse you just killed. An eating progress indicator fills while your GROWTH percentage rises — it was seen climbing from 7% to 12% for that one mouse.
3. Grow into your ability. Step 3 reads "GROW UP TO UNLOCK YOUR ABILITY!" A popup explains: at 34% you grow into a teen and unlock your ability, LUNGE — "jump at your prey and bite on!"

If you're still finding your feet beyond the tutorial, the FERAL Animal Survival beginner guide covers the wider first hour.

How eating becomes growth

GROWTH is a percentage meter, and eating a kill raises it. The meter is also your roadmap: the wolf pup's meter marks 34% as the teen threshold, where the locked ability slot finally opens, and shows the adult goal at 67%. So every meal has a visible payoff — kill, eat, watch the number climb, and hit the next stage.

How the cycle works

1. 01

   Find food

   Locate something your diet allows

   Use the scent feature to see where different things are — food and other animals included. Night vision highlights other players, which helps you read who is prey and who is a threat, though it doesn't point at food items directly.

2. 02

   Kill it or graze it

   Carnivores take prey down, herbivores eat plants

   The tutorial controls are move with WASD, bite with a click. From 34% growth, the wolf's LUNGE (F) leaps onto prey and latches on while damage numbers pop over the target.

3. 03

   Eat

   Feed on your kill or keep grazing

   Eating progress fills and GROWTH rises — the tutorial mouse was worth 7% to 12% on the pup's meter. Other animals can steal or contest a carcass.

4. 04

   Grow toward the next stage

   GROWTH climbs toward life-stage thresholds

   On the wolf's meter, 34% turns a pup into a teen and unlocks its ability, with the adult threshold marked at 67%.

Growth feeds back into hunting: unlocking an ability like LUNGE opens bigger targets — the tutorial points a teen wolf at deer — and bigger meals push you toward the stage after that.

Finding food: scent and night vision

The valley is big and prey moves, so the game gives you two finding tools:

• Scent shows where different things are around you — useful for locating food and other animals alike. It's the feature to reach for when no meal is in sight. (The exact button that activates it isn't covered by this guide.)
• Night vision highlights other players inside the map. One player called it "really good for finding different players" — and those players can be prey or threats. It locates animals rather than food items, so treat it as a way to spot what's hunting you or what you could hunt.

Carnivores: hunt, kill, then eat

Carnivores get food by hunting and killing other animals and then eating the kill. Prey observed in gameplay includes mice, snakes, baby deer and elk — everything from a mouse devoured in one gulp to a snake that fought back hard before it finally became "mine to eat," plus packs of predators working together to bring down an elk.

The wolf's signature hunting tool is LUNGE, and its mechanics matter once you have it:

• The ability slot stays locked with a "34% GROWTH" marker until you reach 34%; unlocking it triggers a "TRY YOUR ABILITY: LUNGE! Get close to a deer and press F to leap on it!" prompt.
• Press F near prey and the wolf leaps on and latches. A "[F] TO LET GO" prompt appears while damage numbers pop over the target.
• Releasing puts F on a numeric cooldown (18 in one recording) and costs the wolf some of its own health — its health sat at 40/46 with a red segment after a deer latch.

Two consequences follow from those numbers: latching onto big prey trades your own health for damage, and after every attempt you have to wait out the cooldown before leaping again. For deeper tactics on taking animals down, the hunting guide picks up where this leaves off.

Herbivores: grazing, sometimes on autopilot

Herbivores skip the hunt and eat plants. The create menu lists porcupine, white-tailed deer, elk, Asian elephant, bison and rhino as herbivores, and the hippo from the hippo update grazes grass too. The nicest quality-of-life detail reported so far comes from a hippo player: while eating, "it just goes straight for the other grass without having you to press the button again. It'll just do it automatically." That auto-grazing is reported for the hippo, so don't count on it for every plant-eater until you see it yourself.

Herbivores are also everyone else's food — deer and elk sit on the carnivore prey list, and the game's own tagline is that every animal is either the hunter or the prey. Feeding with one eye on your escape routes is part of the job; the how to escape predators guide covers the running-away half.

Which animals eat what

Diet groups in the create menu

Diet group

Carnivores

Playable animals

Wolf, river otter, cougar, bald eagle, python, alligator, tiger

How they eat

Hunt and kill other animals, then eat the kill

Diet group

Herbivores

Playable animals

Porcupine, white-tailed deer, elk, Asian elephant, bison, rhino

How they eat

Graze on plants

Diet group

Omnivores

Playable animals

Red fox, grizzly bear

How they eat

Not established from available gameplay

Diet groups in the create menu

Diet group	Playable animals	How they eat
Carnivores	Wolf, river otter, cougar, bald eagle, python, alligator, tiger	Hunt and kill other animals, then eat the kill
Herbivores	Porcupine, white-tailed deer, elk, Asian elephant, bison, rhino	Graze on plants
Omnivores	Red fox, grizzly bear	Not established from available gameplay

The omnivore group is the least mapped: no omnivore meal shows up in the available gameplay, so what the red fox and grizzly bear can practically eat isn't established here. For the full roster with per-animal detail, see all FERAL Animal Survival animals.

Problems while feeding

Not every meal goes to plan. A kill is not always edible, and a kill can be contested or lost before you eat it: one otter player repeatedly killed mice only to find "I don't think I can eat mouse. It's not letting me eat them," leaving a trail of dead mice on the ground, while another player had a dead snake taken from under them and gave up a pond entirely to avoid cougars "that are going to steal my food."

Problems and fixes

The game won't let me eat my kill

Unclear — one otter player kept killing mice without ever eating them

Suggested response

Stop farming that prey and switch targets; uneaten carcasses just pile up on the ground

Another animal steals my kill

Kills can be contested around ponds and open areas

Suggested response

Expect company where predators gather and relocate when they move in — the player who lost the snake also abandoned that pond to get away from the cougars he believed would steal his food

My ability slot is locked

The F slot carries a '34% GROWTH' marker until you reach 34%

Suggested response

Keep eating to climb past 34%; becoming a teen unlocks the ability

One strange footnote to the stolen snake: as far as the player who lost it could tell, the animal that took the carcass never even ate it. Kills can be lost for nothing, which is one more reason not to linger where stronger animals hunt.

Where food fits in the bigger picture

Eating is the engine of progression: GROWTH moves you from baby through teen toward adult, and the growth stages guide breaks down what each stage changes. The earliest stage is also the most fragile, which the baby survival guide addresses, and once that adult threshold is in sight, the how to grow to adult guide takes over. To see who is hunting whom across the whole roster, the predators and prey guide rounds out the food chain.