How to Tame a Raptor in ARK

The Raptor — formally the Utahraptor ("Thief from Utah") — is one of ARK's earliest predators, and ark.wiki.gg describes it as "a medium-size, carnivorous dinosaur known for its ability to pounce on survivors and other small creatures and pin them to the ground." It's a Carnivore, Aggressive-tempered, and a knockout tame — the infobox lists its Taming Method plainly as "Knockout." Every food amount, base stat, saddle level, and breeding timer below comes straight from the wiki's Raptor page; anywhere that page doesn't give a figure, this guide says so instead of guessing.
Knocking Out a Raptor
Quoted directly from the wiki's KO Strategy section: "Start with a thrown Bola to keep it from pursuing you. Once it's immobile, use Tranquilizer Arrows (headshots result in quicker knockouts). Do this carefully; it should not take very many. Once it is unconscious, use Narcotic. Narcotics and Prime Meat will tame it more efficiently. Narcoberries and Raw Meat also work." The page also flags Raptors as pack hunters: "Keep a sharp lookout for other Raptors as they often come in groups," and offers a patience play for a lone one: "When a raptor is alone, wait for it to kill another dino and tranq it while it is feeding on the corpse." A Raptor is not Torpor Immune, so the standard knockout method applies cleanly. At Level 1, once it's unconscious, Torpidity depletes at 0.3 per second, giving you 00:10:00 before it fully drains and the Raptor wakes back up — that's your real feeding window. Besides the Bola, the wiki lists Bear Trap, Large Bear Trap, Plant Species Y Trap, and Net Projectile as other ways to immobilize a Raptor.
Best Food and Kibble for Taming

The infobox names Simple Kibble and Kibble (Parasaur Egg) as the Raptor's preferred kibbles, and Raw Mutton and Raw Prime Meat as its preferred non-kibble foods. The wiki's Level 1 taming-food table backs that up with exact unit counts and feed times: Simple Kibble needs just 1 unit (0:00:54), Raw Mutton needs 2 (0:01:41), Raw Prime Meat needs 3 (0:02:31), Cooked Lamb Chop needs 4 (0:03:20), Cooked Prime Meat needs 5 (0:04:10), and Raw Prime Fish Meat needs 6 (0:02:31). At the bottom of that table, Cooked Fish Meat needs 32 units (0:06:41) — doing the arithmetic, that's 16 times more units than Raw Mutton (32 ÷ 2 = 16), which is the real cost of skipping kibble or mutton for whatever meat happens to be on hand. The page repeats this table at Level 30, 60, 90, 120, and 150 with correspondingly larger amounts — by Level 150, Simple Kibble alone scales to 7 units (0:06:13) — but only the Level 1 numbers above are reproduced here as a worked example.
Raptor Abilities and Base Stats

The wiki lists four active abilities. Bite: "The Raptor bites the target for 15 damage," usable every 0.6s by rider or AI. Pounce: "The Raptor pounces and immobilizes the target. The Raptor can attack with its primary attack while its immobilizing a target" — press the pounce button again to release, usable every 1.16s. Pack Roar (Pack Leader only): the Pack Leader's roar makes up to 6 allied Raptors roar too and grants a Pack Mate buff that "increases their Melee Damage, attack speed, damage resistance and Movement Speed of the whole pack for 45 seconds" — no exact percentage is given for this buff, so this guide doesn't invent one. Jump: the Raptor jumps, with no height or cooldown figure given. Passively, the highest-level Raptor in a pack gets the Pack Leader buff constantly: "increasing its Melee Damage by 25% and damage resistance by 12.5%." Headshots carry a ×3 damage multiplier, and on ARK: Survival Ascended, "body multipliers also apply for player's melee attacks" too. Base stats at Level 1, with per-level wild growth: Health 200 (+40), Stamina 150 (+15), Oxygen 150 (+15), Food 1200 (+120), Weight 140 (+2.8), Melee Damage 15/10 (+0.75/+0.5), Movement Speed 100% (no per-level change listed), Torpidity 180 (+10.8). Working the growth out: a wild Level 20 Raptor's Health would be 200 + 40 × 19 = 960, nearly 5 times its Level 1 value. Note that a second, near-identical stats table on the page lists Melee Damage as 15.75/10.5 instead — with no clear ASE-vs-ASA label on either table, treat the exact figure as version-dependent.
Saddle, XP, and Breeding

The Raptor Saddle unlocks at Level 18, and the page confirms Rider Weaponry is allowed — you can fire your own gun or bow while mounted. A kill nets 12 XP, with a 30% Special Loot Chance logged separately. Drag Weight is 85 and Feces Size is Small; the Raptor is Cloneable but not Radiation Immune. Breeding needs the Raptor Egg, incubated between 20–28°C (68–82°F), or a steady 24°C (75°F) in an Egg Incubator. The wiki's own timers: Incubation Time 1h 59m 59.424s, Baby Time 3h 42m 13.333s, Juvenile Time 14h 48m 53.331s, Adolescent Time 18h 31m 6.664s. Adding just the post-hatch stages — baby + juvenile + adolescent, in seconds: 13,333.333 + 53,333.331 + 66,666.664 = 133,333.328 seconds — converts to 1 day, 13 hours, 2 minutes, 13.328 seconds, exactly matching the page's stated Total Maturation Time, confirming that figure excludes incubation itself. Breeding Interval is 18 hours to 2 days. The habitat list names many maps (The Island, The Center, Scorched Earth, Ragnarok, Extinction, Valguero, Crystal Isles, Genesis: Part 2, Lost Island, Fjordur, and others) alongside Common/Rare/Untameable/Cave spawn tags, but the source text doesn't cleanly separate which tag applies to which map for the base Raptor versus its variants — so no map-by-map breakdown is given here.
Bola first, tranq second. Immobilize with a Bola (or a Bear Trap/Net Projectile) before you start shooting — Raptors hunt in packs, so clear or isolate the area first. Once it's unconscious, load Narcotic plus Simple Kibble, Kibble (Parasaur Egg), Raw Mutton, or Raw Prime Meat, and watch the clock: at Level 1 you've got about 10 minutes before Torpidity fully drains.
Running your own ARK server
A Raptor tame is fast, but a pack encounter or a laggy public server can turn a clean KO into a wasted Bola and a dead tribe member. A private ARK server keeps your trap area clear of other tribes, your Narcotic stash exactly where you left it, and your freshly tamed Raptor safe from random griefing the moment it wakes up — no racing a host's session or fighting three other tribes for the same spawn point.
Conclusion
Taming a Raptor comes down to what ark.wiki.gg actually documents: Bola it, tranq it with headshots for a faster knockout, feed it Simple Kibble or Raw Mutton once it's under (roughly 10 minutes at Level 1 before it wakes), and have a Saddle ready by Level 18. Base stats, the Pack Leader passive, and breeding timers are all pulled straight from the source tables — the exact Pack Roar buff percentages, Jump specifics, and a map-by-map spawn breakdown aren't in the captured page text, so this guide leaves them undocumented rather than guessing.
Ready to raise your own pack of Raptors without losing your trap to a server restart? Spin up your own ARK server and get taming. Use promo code WELCOME for your first month free.
