Food hoarding for future use is an important behavioral strategy adopted by animals to adapt to periodic food scarcity. The evolution of food hoarding behavior critically depends upon the actual consumption of hoarded foods, and enhancement of their fitness. Pilferage by inter- and intra-specific competitors is one of the key reasons of cache-loss for hoarders. In the evolutionary arms race between hoarders and pilferers, both of them should consider the trade-off between cache pilferage and protection. Food hoarding mammals and birds often exhibit avoidance, prevention, and/or tolerance to reduce cache pilferage by others (cache protection), whereas, they rely on olfactory cues, spatial memory and random searching to pilfer food from cache owners (cache pilferage). Food sharing through cache pilferage and protection among sympatric animals that share similar diets is beneficial for coexistence, and has recently attracted much attention in behavioral ecology. Previous studies show that food hoarders (e.g., mammals and birds) usually adopt one or several strategies of hiding caches, changing cache sites, fighting, evicting, or sharing caches to reduce cache pilferage (cache protection), and of olfactory cues, visual and spatial cues, or random searching to pilfer foods from others (cache pilferage). Interactions of cache pilferage and protection among sympatric animals are beneficial for their coexistence both at the population and community levels. Contributions of cache pilferage and protection to coexistence in sympatric animals, asymmetric pilferage between interspecific species and optimal model of cache pilferage and protection in food hoarding animals are needed more attention in the future.