Fall 2012/Winter 2013 Aesculapian Magazine - University of ...

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CollegeNews A Cat’s View: Crittercams Study Reveals World of Roaming Cats By Jessica Luton A collaborative study led by Sonia M. Hernandez, DVM, PhD, DACZM, in partnership with the National Geographic Society, received national media attention in 2012, from the likes of the New York Times, the Huffington Post, ABC News, NBC Nightly News, and NPR, just to name a few. The project aimed to show the secret lives of roaming domestic cats by training owners to use the National Geographic Crittercam, a camera worn comfortably around the cat’s collar. The result yielded more than 2000 hours of data that gave researchers a sort of reality-TV-like look into the daily lives of domestic cats’ activities. Highlights from their findings include: • Only 44% of the cats hunted wildlife, with reptiles, mammals and invertebrates constituting the majority of suburban prey; only 30 percent made successful wildlife captures. • Cat age, sex, and time spent outdoors did not significantly influence hunting behavior. • 85% engaged in at least one risky behavior, including crossing roads (45%), encountering strange cats (25%), eating and drinking substances away from home (25%), exploring storm drain systems (20%), and entering crawlspaces where they could become trapped (20%). • Male cats were more likely to exhibit risky behavior than female cats; older cats exhibited fewer risky behaviors. Among the researchers’ surprises: Cats sometimes adopt a second set of owners, going into another household for food and affection. Researchers were also surprised by the hunting habits of the cats, said Hernandez. In particular, factors such as gender were surprisingly insignificant in predicting whether a cat was a hunter. And only a minority of the cats hunted, but the hunting habits of the cats are still significant for urban wildlife populations. “Probably the most surprising finding is that the most frequent prey were reptiles,” she said. “Birds and small mammals receive a lot of media attention and are more easily ‘noticed’ by owners (e.g., coming home to a pile of feathers) than a dead (and likely desiccated) lizard on the porch, so it makes sense. But reptiles play extremely important ecosystem functions (e.g., lizards consuming insects) in our backyards and should receive more attention.” The recent media attention, she added, was actually spurred by a press release from the American Bird Conservancy that used the results of the study to extrapolate the number of hunting cats in the country and its potential effect on bird populations. “We are happy that it has re-initiated a conversation about why we need to supervise our cats when they are outdoors for two reasons,” she said. First, cats that hunt are adding to all the other alreadypresent pressures on our urban wildlife, she said. For some people, urban wildlife is sometimes the only wildlife that they will get to see or experience and urban habitats may be the last frontier for some species, so it would be nice to keep it free of non-native predators. 5 The University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine
Photos courtesy of kittycams.uga.edu “Second, no veterinarian will dispute that cats that live indoors or are supervised when outdoors live longer, healthier lives,” she said. “As a former clinician, first of small animals, I hated to see cats poisoned or hit by vehicles brought to the clinic. Later as wildlife practitioner, I felt it was unfair that so many critters would end up in the hospital with fatal injuries from cats.” The study is now looking for funding to apply this technology to study a colony of feral cats that are managed as a trap-neuter-release colony and whose manager is truly interested in knowing what the cats are doing. “We know there are behavioral differences between owned pet cats and feral cats and we would like to understand how that translates to their hunting behavior,” she said. “We are looking for other feral cat colony managers who would be willing to collaborate on this effort because this technology and its analysis is a very objective methodology and we are interested in bridging the gap between cat and wildlife activists and solid science.” Hernandez is an assistant professor of wildlife disease who is jointly appointed to the CVM’s Southeastern Wildlife Disease Study and the UGA Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Her co-collaborators on the project were: The National Geographic Society; John P. Carroll, professor of wildlife ecology and management at Warnell; and, graduate student Kerrie Anne Loyd. Sponsorship for the project was provided by: The National Geographic Society; Kenneth A. Scott Charitable Trust, a KeyBank Trust; the Morris Animal Foundation Veterinary Scholars Program; Oconee Rivers Audubon Society; the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources; Pender Pet Caring Foundation. For More Information For more details on the study, including video footage and photos, visit: www.kittycams.uga.edu Aesculapian Fall 2012/Winter 2013 6
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