People trying to prevent your cats from killing local wildlife you may want to follow the findings of a new study released on Thursday. This suggests that feeding your cat a meat-rich diet and playing with it regularly will help satiate its appetite to hunt.
Animal researchers in the UK enlisted the help of 355 cats from 219 families in England for their experiment; cats were chosen specifically for their habit of bringing prey home. To provide a reasonable baseline, all cats were observed in their natural environment for seven weeks prior to the start of the experiment. Then, over a five-week period, they had most cats experiencing various conditions that can affect their outdoor hunting behavior (a control group was left on its own all the time). These conditions included different diets, toys and devices marketed specifically to keep cats away. fangs, like collars with bells attached or a brightly colored necklace easily seen by birds.
In comparison with the control group and the basic behavior of the cats, the researchers found that several methods seemed to reduce wildlife hunting.
In cats that received high quality, high protein diets with lots of meat and few grains, for example, the number of animals brought home has been reduced by 36%. In the playgroup – where owners played with their cats using feather wands and toys the size of a mouse for five to ten minutes per day – the reduction was 25%. Brightly colored collars also reduced bird predation specifically by 42% but it had no effect on hunting other small animals. Cat bells had no significant effect, and the puzzle feeders actually seemed to increase hunting for some reason.
G / O Media can receive a commission
While many commercial cat diets are high quality and high in protein, it is possible that some plant-based diets lack certain micronutrients that cats instinctively try to supplement with game. Iit is not exactly clear why the puzzle feeders failed so badly seriously. It is possible, the authors theorized, that the inexperience of cats with them would make them frustrated and more hungry at the same time.
Of course the best One way to prevent cats from killing wild animals is to keep them indoors at all times. But some owners insist that cats need a dose of outdoor activity to stay healthy, and there may be semifierce cats that remain adamant about living a double life. Therefore, for these situations, the researchers hope that their conclusions can at least help some owners to find a comfortable middle ground.
“In managing predation by domestic cats, the behavior of the owner is as important as that of the cat and, therefore, to reduce the killing by cats, management strategies need to be effective and implemented by the owners,” wrote the authors in their article Published in Current Biology. “Positive interventions, designed to benefit cats and appeal to owners, can reduce the tendency for cats to hunt and therefore can form the basis of conservation where everyone wins.”
The researchers plan to investigate whether cat hunting can be further reduced through behavioral tricks, such as combining two or more methods. They also plan to study cat nutrition more closely, to see if they can identify any missing micronutrients that could be added unlessfleshy diets.