[quote]
That mouse carcass Kitty presents you with is just the tip of a very bloody iceberg. When researchers attached kittycams to house cats, they found a secret world of slaughter.
While only 30% of roaming house cats kill prey — two animals a week on average — they are still slaying more wildlife than previously believed, according to research from the University of Georgia.
Wildlife advocates say it is a frightening level of feline foul play. Based on a U.S. house-cat population of 74 million, "cat predation is one of the reasons why one in three American birds species are in decline," says George Fenwick, president of American Bird Conservancy.
"The previous estimates were probably too conservative because they didn't include the animals that cats ate or left behind," University of Georgia researcher Kerrie Anne Loyd says.
The cats brought home just under a quarter of what they killed, ate 30% and left 49% to rot where they died.
The carnage cuts across species. Lizards, snakes and frogs made up 41% of the animals killed, Loyd and fellow researcher Sonia Hernandez found. Mammals such as chipmunks and voles were 25%, insects and worms 20% and birds 12%. The researchers will present their findings this week at an Ecological Society of America conference in Portland, Ore.
Seeking a window into the hidden lives of cats, the researchers recruited 60 owners in the Athens, Ga., area. Each owner put a small video camera mounted on a break-away collar on the cat in the morning and let the cat out, then removed the camera and downloaded the footage each night. Each cat's activities were recorded for seven to 10 days. The cats usually spent four to six hours outside every day.
The researchers worked with the National Geographic CritterCam team, which builds tiny mobile data gathering systems to study wild animal behavior. The cat cameras were the smallest they've made to date, National Geographic's Greg Marshall says.
Cats aren't just a danger to others, they're also a danger to themselves. The cats in the study were seen engaging in such risky behavior as crossing roadways (45%), eating and drinking things they found (25%), exploring storm drains (20%) and entering crawl spaces where they could become trapped (20%).
Male cats were more likely to do risky things than female cats, and older cats were more careful than younger ones.[/quote]
[url]http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-08-06/house-cats-kill/56831262/1[/url]
This is why you put cat collars with easily rung bells on them, so they can't be sneaky.
Yeah, house cats and feral cats are estimated to kill around 4 billion animals per year combined
I'd never put a bell on my cat, fucking rats and mice everywhere and I'm glad he gets rid of them.
That's not a big surprise. Cats are predators, so they're programmed to kill anything smaller than they are, yet they're too well fed to do so out of need. As a result they go out there and kill shit just for fun.
I wouldn't worry about it though. [QUOTE=Ereunity;37148272]This is why you put cat collars with easily rung bells on them, so they can't be sneaky.[/QUOTE]
And then you wonder why you pay the exterminators to deal with the mouse problem...
[editline]9th August 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=FalconKrunch;37148311]I'd never put a bell on my cat, fucking rats and mice everywhere and I'm glad he gets rid of them.[/QUOTE]
Same here. If it wasn't for my cats I'd have to spend thousands on pest control every year. I live out on the edge of civilization too, so it's not like a one-time application will work.
This is why I put so many cats in Dwarf Fortress, dead bodies of insects everywhere,
[QUOTE=Appolox;37148369]This is why I put so many cats in Dwarf Fortress, dead bodies of insects everywhere,[/QUOTE]
And kitten meat
[QUOTE=Ereunity;37148272]This is why you put cat collars with easily rung bells on them, so they can't be sneaky.[/QUOTE]
All of my cats wear bell collars and still they manage to leave us glorious amounts of small woodland rodents.
[QUOTE=FalconKrunch;37148311]I'd never put a bell on my cat, fucking rats and mice everywhere and I'm glad he gets rid of them.[/QUOTE]
We put a bell on our cat, but he kept killing just as much birds and other animals. At that point we just shrugged and figured he was ridding the animal kingdom of retards, like some kind of personified survival of the fittest agent.
There's been a mouse in our house one time ever. Our cats don't have opportunities to kill.
Mouses are probably good for the environment as a whole anyway.
I love cats but I really hate when they kill birds.
Poor birds, killed by human love for cute animals.
[QUOTE=Elecbullet;37148435]There's been a mouse in our house one time ever. Our cats don't have opportunities to kill.
Mouses are probably good for the environment as a whole anyway.[/QUOTE]
Maybe outside your house, but not inside. The wreck a lot of shit, dig holes through your stuff and leave behind bacteria, diseases, poop and other unhygienic shit. They have no bladders, so after drinking they leave a trail of piss wherever they walk. Fun times when they're in your kitchen.
We've had a mice infestation in my old house. Probably because our pet bird was messy and kept knocking seeds and stuff out of its cage on the floor below. Ever since, I can just -smell- whenever a house or a room has mice in them. They have a very specific, stinky smell.
[QUOTE=Elecbullet;37148435]There's been a mouse in our house one time ever. Our cats don't have opportunities to kill.
Mouses are probably good for the environment as a whole anyway.[/QUOTE]
Mice are pests and they destroy large quantities of food very fast.
They have evolved to do nothing other than feed off of humans, and while cute, are total pests.
The amount of dead Pidgins my cat's got stuck in the cat flap is a piss take.
I love it when my girlfriends cat brings me his trophy's
fucking head sized trophy's..
Cats are fucking beasts
My house used to be crawling with mice and then we got neighbours that moved in with 2 cats. Haven't seen any mice since.
my cat is old and fat as fuck yet still manages to kill everything in sight. bells don't seem to do jack shit, most days there's a present in the kitchen.
[QUOTE=joe588;37148540]my cat is old and fat as fuck yet still manages to kill everything in sight. bells don't seem to do jack shit, most days there's a present in the kitchen.[/QUOTE]
It's not a present. [I]It's a warning.[/I]
it's so fat when it walks down the stairs you think there's somebody in the house.
I opened my door once to find 6 mice, gutted and deader then dead, all neatly arranged on my doorstep.
Cat got a very special meal that day, they do their work better then the damn exterminators
I used to have a cat with a bell, and when he went to hunt he just held the bell in his paw so it didn't make any noise
I'm sure the cats ability to kill pests was why people even bothered to domesticate them in the first place
[QUOTE=Matrix374;37148630]I'm sure the cats ability to kill pests was why people even bothered to domesticate them in the first place[/QUOTE]
I have a feeling it's more because of this
[img]http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/9100000/kitty-kitties-9109284-500-460.jpg[/img]
My cat brought half of a dead mouse home a few months ago and left it on the kitchen table for all to see.
Guts hanging out and everything.
Was pretty cool.
[editline]9th August 2012[/editline]
And the other cat used to kill pigeons like crazy back in the day.
This one time it killed a pigeon and then the dog ate the carcass, only left the wings in the backyard.
That was pretty cool too.
Our now-dead cat had a bell on her neck, but she still managed to hunt and kill like a mad fuck. She brought in several live birds and let them loose into our house and once she brought in a huge fucking MOLE that was like 75% of her size. That FUCKER.
My cat learned how to open windows and often kills rabbits. Whenever I stop stroking him he pulls out a claw, latches onto my arm and pulls it back to keep so as to keep stroking him.
The house often has dead crows, mice, baby rabbits, etc.
He terrifies me.
[QUOTE=uitham;37148567]I used to have a cat with a bell, and when he went to hunt he just held the bell in his paw so it didn't make any noise[/QUOTE]
It's interesting how they can adapt intellectually to that.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
