Own a cat that wanders the neighbourhood?
Ever wonder what they do when they’re not at home?
Curious about their impact on local environments, Jonathan Chu wondered as well, and then he came up with the idea of recording felines with a ‘cat-cam.’
A PhD student at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Chu is hoping to learn more about the effect cats have.
“We brought them over as our companion animals, so we want to know if this introduced species (to North America) is having an impact on the native species,” said Chu.
“Some early work suggests that cats may be eating a lot from the environment. Past studies have indicated 100 million to 350 million birds in Canada. That’s quite a big number.”
According to one publication, cat owners reported that their pets brought home 3.5 prey items a month.
Chu says previous studies have asked cat owners to list things that cats have brought home, “but it doesn’t give you the full picture, because they may be killing things that they don’t bring home to their owners.”
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“The cameras allow us to measure directly everything the cat is potentially hunting. It allows us to measure all the species that it’s hunting. Is it a sensitive species? Is it a native species? That could be one type of problem. If it’s mostly invasive species, like house sparrows, that’s maybe less of a conversation problem. But it would be interesting to know, and that’s what’s unknown currently.”
Chu has previously recorded cats in the Guelph area, and now he’s heading to the South Okanagan, where he’s looking for volunteers to place cat-cams on their felines.
Asked what type of video he’s captured to date, Chu said he’s seen cats hunt down a surprising variety of animals.
“When we first saw an Eastern cottontail (rabbit), I didn’t really realize that they could catch something so big,” said Chu. “But one of the cool realizations I’ve had is that they eat a lot of invertebrates. So, moths, cicadas, grasshoppers. There’s even some footage of a cat bringing a centipede back.”
Chu said this means cats are opportunistic and can eat a lot of things.
And by bringing the study to B.C., he’s wondering if local cats hunt different prey than what’s been studied so far in Ontario.
“We’d expect it to be (different),” said Chu, “but we’d like to know for sure.”
He added that some cats don’t hunt but that others are voracious, “so there’s variation on how much a cat eats from the outdoors. Wnd that’s another huge unknown: Why are certain cats eating a lot?”
Chu said understanding cat predation rates in Canada can lead to management strategies.
If you’re a cat owner and interested in joining the study, go online for more information.
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