people seeking to keep their cats outdoors from killing local wildlife may wish to take into account the results of a new study launched on Thursday. This one suggests the fact that feeding the cat a meat-rich diet and playing with them regularly will help them satisfy their appetite for hunting.
Animal researchers in the UK have requested help for 355 cats from 219 households in England for their experiment; the cats were chosen especially for their habit of bringing prey home. To provide a reasonable basis, all cats were observed in their natural environment for seven weeks before the start of the experiment. Then, over a five-week period, most cats had various conditions that could affect their outdoor hunting behavior (a control group was left at their disposal at all times). These conditions include various diets, toys and devices marketed specifically to keep cats away prey, such as collars with chime attached or a brightly colored vivid collar easy to see of birds.
Compared to the control group and the basic behavior of cats, the researchers found that several methods appeared to reduce wildlife hunting.
For cats that have been offered superior 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 the owners played with their cats using feather rods and mouse-sized toys for five to 10 minutes per day – the discount was 25%. Brightly colored collars also reduced bird prey by 42% but had no effect on hunting other small animals. Cat bells did not have a significant effect at all and puzzle feeders seemed to actually increase hunting for some reason.
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Although many commercial diets for cats are high quality and high in protein, some herbal diets may not have certain micronutrients that cats instinctively try to supplement with hunting. IIt is not clear why the puzzle feeders did not succeed so much dumbass. It is possible, the authors theorized, that the lack of experience of cats with them made them frustrated and hungrier at the same time.
Of course, the best the way to prevent cats from killing wildlife is to keep them indoors at all times. But some owners insist that cats need to have a dose of outdoor activity to stay healthy and there may be semi-wild cats that stay steadfast about leading a double life. So for these situations, researchers hope that their findings can help at least some homeowners find a comfortable middle ground.
“In the management of predation by domestic cats, the behavior of the owner is as important as the behavior of cats and thus, to reduce the killing of cats, management strategies must be both effective and implemented by owners,” the authors wrote in the paper their published in Current Biology. “Positive interventions, designed to benefit cats and attract owners, can reduce cats’ tendency to hunt and could therefore be the basis for win-win conservation.”
Researchers intend to investigate whether cat hunting can be further reduced by behavioral tricks, such as by combining two or more methods. He also intends to study cat nutrition more closely, to see if I can identify the missing micronutrients that could be added towith core diets.