Tags to monitor how often cats kill
It is predicted that the 9 million pet cats that are owned in the UK are killing over 150 million small animals a year and scientists have just produced an electronic tracking system to try and prove it.
Wildlife researchers are equipping 200 neighbourhood cats with electronic tags which mean that the researchers can monitor the cats to discover how much wildlife is destructed by the average feline.
Most experts believe that the 9 million domestic cats in the UK are killing mice, birds, moles, rabbits and a variety of other wildlife creatures each year. In the case of the house sparrow, they are becoming rarer and their numbers have dropped sharply – cat predators could be a serious threat to the end of this species.
Rebecca Dulieu a Reading University biologist, has set up the experiment which should provide the real answers to how threatening the average cat is to wildlife using electronic tracking tagged to computer analysis which are able to monitor unprecedented detail in the cat’s movements.
“We know what cats do in our homes - they sleep,” said Dulieu. “But we have virtually no idea of what they get up to outdoors, particularly at night. Now we can find out.”
Guinness, is a recruit for the experiment, he is an 11 year old average black cat whose owner is Robert Davey, IT engineer. Robert has been provided with a diary so he is able to record the kill record of his cat with a plastic storage bag to store the animal bodies. The dead bodies are passed to Rebecca Dulieu for analysing.
“We have found our cats are bringing back, on average, 4.8 dead animals a year,” Dulieu said. “Most are mice but there are also rats, dormice and shrews. Birds make up about a third of the total. One cat even brought back a weasel.”
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